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THE RIVER OF LIFE

THE RIVER OF LIFE

BY

JOHN ST. LOE STRACHEY

EDITOR OF 'THE SPECTATOR'

' Most true it is that I have look' J on truth
Askance and strangely; but, by all above.
These blenches gave my heart another youth. *

SHAKESPEARE

HODDER AND STOUGHTON
LIMITED LONDON

Printed in Great Britain by T. and A. Constable Ltd.
at the Edinburgh University Press

TO MY SON

EVELYN JOHN ST. LOE STRACHEY
THE BEGETTER OF THIS DIARY

You will recall how in the Inn at Rouen on the evening of
the first day of our Motor Tour through France, made in the
autumn of 1922, you urged me to write a Diary. I should
capture, you said, my flying fancies, put a pin through them,
and fasten them on to my page.

I replied that it was a far easier thing to plan books for
other people than to write them yourself. But the thing
was not destined to end in a sentence. It popped in and out
of my head as we skirted the Auvergne, threaded the moun-
tains and valleys of the Cevennes, and, bursting into the
glories of the Rhone Valley, stayed our wheels at Avignon.
I was always saying to myself, c That ought to go into the
Diary ! ' Yet I told myself also that it could never be. ' There
will be no Diary. Of course not : how could there be if I
don't write one ? And that I shall never do ! '

Then suddenly out of a cloudless sky fell the thunderbolt
of your illness with all its dangers and perplexities. A call in
the night : an hour or two of that strange half -life in which
you hold quite honestly and at the same time that there is not
the least reason to be alarmed and that you are face to face
with an imminent and deadly peril. As the day dawned
your mother and I saw in each other's eyes that our fears had
it. Next, three or four days of sudden and swift decisions,
fierce action and long hours of suspense, and then the clouds
broke, and ' voire malade ' became ' our convalescent.9

You lived. And we — your mother, your sister and I —
were stirred by the old primal instinct to bring you our

vi THE RIVER OF LIFE

offerings. As I sat in the nuns' garden at the Clinique of
the Sisters of St. Francis waiting to come on duty, I thought
it would please you to bring instead of flowers and books
and gateaux a la creme, some specimen pages of the Diary once
in debate — now 4 a command performance.'

You are always a keen, and so a beneficent, critic, but
here you were so benevolent that the bedside pleasantry — it
was no more at first — soon grew like a gourd. You called for
more, and I felt a keen pleasure in writing what you found
pleasure in reading. And so the habit possessed me, and
before I knew it I was a confirmed Diarist and your Book was
in being. If it has merit, you are the cause.

I have gone on as I began by making the test of whether
this or that butterfly or moth should be netted and pinned
to the paper : ' Would he be amused by such reflections, or
stories, or comments on this or that theme ? ' That has
turned out, though I did not realize it at the time, a great
gain to my Diary. It has given it the quality which makes
the ' Letter ' so attractive. The letter-writer may be digressive
or journalier, on his day or off it, glad or sorry, moody or
joyous, but he always has his eye on his correspondent, and,
with this, the knowledge that the correspondent's eye is also
on him.

Therefore in a double sense the book is yours. It came at
your suggestion, and direct thoughts of you are woven into
its texture. This does not mean that you will agree with
the opinions expressed, or that they were written ' at you.'
They were not ; but they were written for you — to be read
by you.

You will understand exactly what I mean even when others
do not.

I have pencilled this as it has chanced in an old-fashioned
inn in the centre of London (Garlant's Hotel, Suffolk Street).
Also it was written on the blank leaves in my pocket edition
of Eothen. That is not inappropriate.

The book itself was written in many places. It was begun

DEDICATION vii

partly in the nuns' garden, and partly in the inn at Avignon.
Some of it first saw the light in a Paris hotel ; some in a
London nursing home ; some on Welsh mountains ; some on
our Surrey hills ; some in The Spectator office ; some in two
London squares, some in Italy. Some, again, came to me on
the back of a horse ; some in the train ; some as I walked
my Surrey terrace or my woodland paths. I have used all
sources for the credits paid into my mental clearing-house.

I will end by borrowing the last words of Kinglake's Preface
to * one of his friends,' which is the Prologue of Eoihen :

1 Of course all these explanations are meant for casual readers.
To you, without one syllable of excuse or deprecation, and in all
the confidence of a friendship that never yet was clouded, I give
the long-promised volume, and add but this one " Good-bye ! "
for I dare not stand greeting you here.'

Why should I not call you a friend ? Our wise ancestors
used the word of well-loved wives, and our country girls still
speak of their husband-to-be as ' my friend ! '

Certainly our friendship has never yet been clouded.

J. ST. LOE STRACHEY.

AN ANTE-SCRIPT

A Diary should be as desultory as the Wind, as all-
embracing as the Ocean, as dynamic as a deep and
flashing River — which is never the same river except
for one intangible, incommensurable, furtive instant.
The Diary, again like the River, is always impelled
by a special and characteristic impulse, always start-
ing and never arriving — always sliding away from its
source, like the General in Carlyle who is described
as setting out for the City of Nowhere, ' and, what is
more, will arrive.'

But a Diary, though it must claim this kind of
chaotic universality, has got to be reflective — once
more like a River. Just in the kind of elusive way
that a River reflects the things on the banks and the
boats and rafts that float upon it, so must a Diary. It
must also describe and interpret what it reflects, and,
above all, it must stimulate and interest the writer,
or else it will never stimulate and interest the reader.
And so here I am, getting back to the old journalistic
ideal of good ' copy ' ! Unless he can say it is good
4 copy,' the editor will throw the proffered manuscript
into his basket — and where is your distinguished
contributor then ? In literature, even more than on
the stage, those who live to please must please to live.

It is curious to remember that this supposed low
and degraded ideal of good ' copy ' was the ideal of
the most fastidious of critics, a poet and a man of
letters. Such is the irony of fate that if I want to
give my point its plainest and most urgent endorse-
ment, I must go for it, of all people in the world, to

x THE RIVER OF LIFE

Matthew Arnold. ' To Matthew Arnold ! ' I can
hear a modernist critic say with a shiver of pity.
Yes, Matthew Arnold, and no other ! He did it ;
and honestly, if you would only incline that haughty
ear to listen, I know I could prove to you that he is
not half so much out of sympathy with the new mode
as he is supposed to be. Long before those quick
eyes have lost their poignant gleam, the eternal trifler
will have brought into fashion again the man of
sweetness and light. All the blind spots of literature
and of the arts in the course of time cease to be blind.

4 If poets take not when they write
Pleasure in creating,
The world in its turn will not take
Pleasure in contemplating.'

But if I am not careful, and run on like this for
another page, some votary of the New Psychology
will get busy upon my Diary before it is begun, and
prove that I, like all apologists, am suffering from an
inferiority complex, am trying to rid myself of some
fear that has haunted me for years. Then the sub-
conscious will be subpoenaed and analysed, and, before
I know where I am, I shall be proved to be a worthy
inmate of that great and magnificent asylum — the
Wide World.

DIARY

THE RHONE AND THE FERRY

7th October 1922. — A trackway across the Island
fields led up from the Ferry towards Villeneuve-les-
Avignon. By that way may have passed the Popes
on their sleek, celibate, imperturbable mules ; but
we took the water-way. Who would have refused
the invitation made to us ? It was an automatic
ferry-boat. You get in and shove off, and the Rhone,
potent and august, does the rest. The man in the
bows, with a huge rudder and a bull- dog, is only an
ornament when in midstream, though a Collector of
Voluntary Fares ashore. It is altogether charming
to see that old enemy of the schoolroom, the Resolu-
tion of Forces (Science afternoon lesson) harnessed
to serve one at call. I never much believed in him
in old days, but here he was working away at his
proper angle, and steadily obeying his formula about
8 equal and opposite forces.' There are strong iron
posts, each about fifteen feet high on the two banks
of the river, supporting a bar, which does not sag
as much as you would expect. To this main bar is
attached a rod. It has an eye-hole at one end and
is made fast to the boat at the other. The current
tries to force the boat down- stream. But the rod
attached to the cross-river bar holds her. So she
slides across the river, the rod running merrily along
the bar. And that is all there is to the Resolution of
Forces when you catch him fairly and squarely in the
act,

A

2 THE RIVER OF LIFE

I asked the helmsman first if his dog was a bull-dog.
At this he winked, waggled his hand, and replied,
' Moitie ! ' I then asked, ' Does he always go back-
wards and forwards with the boat ? ' ' Yes, always.'
At this the bull-dog snored. There was another dog
in the boat, sad and sleepless. He belonged to a
Chasseur de Lievres ; a pleasant, silent man, but of an
inconclusive temper. At least so I judged him to be.
To my knowledge he came across the river to the side
we were on, returned with us, and made no attempt
to get out when we did. The sun was shining — the
genial, generous sun of the Midi — and there was no
need to hurry. So why leave the boat ? Besides,
A Avignon nous ne sommes pas fort nomades. Hence
I opine the Hunter would sit on, saving cartridges,
unless some one goaded him into action by an epigram.
To be exact, gently comes the world to those who are
cast in the gentle mould of the City of the Popes.
Even the river rushes rhythmically and also with a
kind of vague reserve and irresponsibility. It seems
eternally slipping off the landscape without exactly
intending it. And yet, when roused by the rains or
a melting snow, it can be as fierce and mad as the
people of Avignon were when in the Revolution they
massacred the wretched suspects in the ' offices ' of
the Papal Palace.

VIE DE PROVENCE

9th October 1922. — It is a liberal education to live
in a French provincial town. There, if anywhere,
you come to understand what the poet (Wordsworth,
if you please, not Pope) meant when he said that
c life demands an art.' It not only demands it here,
but gets it. Nowhere else is the way of life more
consciously, deliberately, scientifically, made smooth

VIE DE PROVENCE 3

before you. These gentle, happy, kindly, good-
tempered, good- mannered people are experts in the
Laboratory of Life. Though they seem so ingenuous
as to be almost indolent, every action, every impulse,
every expression of emotion is calculated, measured,
prescribed. Their city is not a fortuitous concourse
of incongruous human atoms, but an orderly assembly
of men and women inspired by a common purpose.
Here is a true community. The Polis of the Greeks is
alive in Avignon. Watch carefully that young
woman tripping off to business, or to ' Higher Educa-
tional Classes,' and you will see by the poise of her
head, and by the delicate deliberation with which
she plants her pretty high-heeled shoes, that she is
well aware that she is about a very serious piece of
business — the business of getting a big dividend out
of existence. And she is doing it in co-partnership
with the other girls of their beloved town. The work
of the young women, married and single, is to look
pleasant and be in a nice, but not exaggerated way,
tris coquette. You must not let the town down by
being dingy and untidy. The men, old and young,
and the elder women are informed by the same idea.
Every one brings his or her contribution of seemly
happiness to the common store. Of course, no one
must desert the town. That would be treason. But,
in fact, no one wants to do so. Why should they ?
He who is tired of Avignon is tired of life. Perish
the thought ! Take another petit gateau a la creme
at your gouter, or another glass of wine at dinner, or
go to the theatre three times a week instead of twice,
or have a talk with your spiritual director ; but never
give in to any morbid desire to take life by storm, or
be adventurous, or nomadic, or romantic. Trans-
lated into material terms, i.e. put into practice, this
means an admirable cuisine, pleasant, sound, un-

4 THE RIVER OF LIFE

heady wines at a reasonable price, patisserie beyond
the dreams of Rumpelmeyer, coffee which soothes the
soul, and bright arrays of shops in which you can get
all that reasonable people can desire or deserve.
And everywhere the sun of the Midi throwing his
enchanting rays, making all things new and perfect,
and not to be changed at any price. The Mistral ?
Well, a man cannot be always blessed, and it is healthy
if you wrap up. The mosquitoes ? They only bite
strangers, and no one should be a stranger to Avignon.
After a little while — perhaps in ten years — you will
learn to forget the mosquitoes. And yet . . . and yet.
. . . Even though la vie douce de Provence is indeed
a reality here, could any one with the rover's blood
in his veins endure it except as a passing show. It
may be — I think it is — this temper which makes France
the happiest country in the world. But we restless,
humourish English can only admire and hurry on our
way, whatever that way may be. We chase the
Rainbow by a thousand routes. It is not for us to
live and let live. We must plan, and dream, and
suffer. But we do not sneer ; only wonder. c Non
equidem invideo, miror magis" ' I do not envy. I
do but admire, and with all my heart.' Truly did
Goldsmith say :

* They please, are pleased. They give to get esteem.
Till, seeming blest, they grow to what they seem.'

Oh ! happy band of brothers, you have found out
the secret for yourselves, if not for others. And so
your land will remain great and prosperous and
united. Nothing can destroy your indomitable savoir
vivre. Your noble scholarship in the art of being
and becoming will keep you alive and alert to all the
minor joys of existence.

TRIAL AND ERROR

TRIAL AND ERROR

12th October 1922. — My children and I have arrived,
and without any ' immortal moment,' or mauvais quart
(Theme, or ' tragic instant,' at a very good under-
standing. ' Not differing except in opinion,' we are
in sympathy on most points. In the essentials I am,
of course, wholly with the new generation. They
are right a thousand times over to take nothing on
trust, and to test every statement, every policy, every
belief, every law for themselves. They could no
other. They cannot avoid the dominant feeling that
there must have been something wrong in a system
which produced the Great War, the Russian debacle,
and the Russian famine, and is threatening half
Europe with economic ruin. No wonder they say,
' We will not stop our explorations or accept any-
thing as natural and necessary till we can prove its
worth by trial. " Advance Trial and Error " is our
Order of the Day.' Though I think one may easily
exaggerate the permanent effect of the war on human
society, I do not wonder at its immediate effects or the
feelings to which it gives rise. Besides, how can we
do ought but respect, nay, revere, those who, instead
of an easy idle acceptance of things as they are, will
not rest till they know, or, at any rate, till they have
tried to know, the truth as to the items presented on
the agenda of life ? Only the Truth can set us free.
All honour to those, then, who desire above all things
to know the facts of exisence, and will never avert
their eyes because they dread the event.

MARGINALIA

13th October 1922. — Marginalia are often more than
the books they deface and adorn. They are some-

6 THE RIVER OF LIFE

times written, sometimes conveyed by stains of tea,
hot-buttered toast, wine, tobacco, spilled ink, candle
droppings, and mere dirty hands. These comments
deposited by the unlettered muse are often the most
eloquent of all, and show with a deft precision the
reader's mood. I admit, however, that the easier
way is the plain comment in a fairly clear hand.
Coleridge was a great annotator, as we know from
the passage in which Lamb declares that it was a
delight to lend S. T. C. a book. It always came back
enriched with priceless Marginalia. Mr. Beckford of
Fonthill, the Regency millionaire and author of
Vathek, was another. That sinister amateur of life
and letters (both on the seamy side) filled his stately
books with Marginalia. They were not, however, of
the easy, spluttering kind ; but caustic, concise, and
clothed with faultless and majestic phrases. What
is stranger, they were written in priceless first editions,
bound by the greatest binders of the age to which
they belong — tooled and gilded in c Russia,' and
smelling of the bazaars of Ispahan or Teheran. At
the great Hamilton sale, one of the events of my youth,
Beckford' s Library was included, and so tremendous
were the Marginalia that even the auctioneer's clerk,
in making out the sale catalogue, could not refrain
from transcribing some of them. My ears still ring
with one of them — but alas ! alas ! imperfectly. It
was in a copy of the Decline and Fall. Now, for some
reason not easy to fathom, Beckford hated Gibbon,
and one day stabbed him with a pencil in his study.
I remember the note began in diabolic triumph, ' Ha,
ha ! Mr. Gibbon ! ' Mr. Beckford then proceeded
to get his prey on his most sensitive spot — his style.
He abused it for its easy vulgarity and its mock
grandeur, and ended by saying that its tawdry em-
bellishments reminded him of the ' trampled roses of

MARGINALIA 7

the prostitute.' The well-combed wig was cruelly
knocked off that large, kindly, naughty old head, and
flung into the kennel with a curse and a leer by this
bitter, mordant disputant. Fancy a critic with the
tongue of a viper, and £100,000 a year (vide Farington's
Diary for the exact figures), and with a cold indiffer-
ence enough not to parade his work to the world ! He
let his flowers of the margin lie unseen till, as I have
noted, the inevitable auction clerk who, like the
Recording Angel, sooner or later comes to all, copied
them out in his catalogue ' to be obtained in the sale-
room or by application to Messrs. Minstrel and
Merlin.'

Such men and their books ' copiously annotated in
an old hand,' as the booksellers' catalogues have it,
are the Augustans of Marginalia. Yet I find almost
as much pleasure in the work of the ladies, old and
young, who ornament the novels and poems in seaside
circulating libraries or the bookshelves in old-fashioned
country houses. I remember well reading a novel —
by Ouida, I expect — in which the hero's eyes were
described as ' those soft brown eyes that look through
you and into the depths of your nature, eyes whose
glance may mean life or death.' And opposite in a
delicate female hand, evidently not ironic, ' Ah ! how
true ! ' I confess, though by nature hard-hearted
and inclined to laugh, that 6 the page was wet with
Strachey's tear.' Poor old maid, her wound may
have been as deep and as cruel as that of any of the
young gentlemen or ladies who parade, ' from London
to New England's shores the pageant of a bleeding
heart.' To be sallow-faced and timid, disconsidered
and ridiculous, provides no armour against fate. As
Sydney Smith said so well, ' the curate crushed feels
as great a pang as does a Bishop when confuted.'

I recall another naive feminine marginal note

8 THE RIVER OF LIFE

which was purely delightful. It was in Shelley's
Queen Mab. Opposite one of the dull and laboured
diatribes against Christianity some good lady had
pencilled, ' An atheist wrote this.' Obviously ! And
yet it is explicable in a kind of Irish way. c The man
who wrote this was an atheist. And atheists are
admittedly bad men. But we should not attend to
what bad men say. Also we ought to warn others
against the insidious attacks of atheists. Therefore
I, Maria Adelaide, shall as in duty bound put up a
warning.' So worked the mind of the lady in the
'thirties. Bravo ! She did what she thought right,
and so did Shelley, and both in their several ways
went away justified, for both strove to do right as
they saw Truth and Righteousness.

THE PONT DU GARD AND THE BULL-FIGHT

15th October 1922. — And so I have seen the immortal
Pont du Gard. It is the least disappointing sight
I have ever beheld. I have looked on plenty of
Roman remains, many aqueducts and hundreds of
viaducts— indeed, I may be said to be an amateur
in viaducts and will gladly travel miles to see even
a minor range of arches, brick or stone ; but nothing
like this has ever charmed my vision. In spite of the
endless photographs, engravings, and ' cuts ' in every
book of architecture ever attempted, it utterly
surprised me with its majesty and yet absolute
appropriateness and moderation. It is in a modest
ravine and spans a modest river, .and yet in spite of
its greatness it is nowhere out of scale, but holds a
just proportion. Also it is not a piece of engineer-
ing work aping architecture. To walk in the water-
track encrusted with a foot-thick deposit of limestone
left by this Roman main to Nimes is to realize that

PONT DU GARD AND THE BULL-FIGHT 9

it was first of all a business proposition. This granted,
however, the nameless Roman or Provencal who
designed it evidently said to himself, 6 There is no
reason to be ugly because one is useful. Let us show
the Transalpine Gaul that, when Rome speaks in
terms of water, she speaks with dignity and beauty.'

In spite of my surprise I would have given a great
deal to have come upon the Pont du Gard without
ever having heard of it. That would have been
indeed an experience and would have made one feel
the glory of Rome in a lightning flash. Curiously
enough, the first Romantic had this ecstasy.
Rousseau tells us in the Confessions that on a journey
in Provence as a young man he suddenly came upon
the Pont du Gard and was overwhelmed. In a
moment like that of ' Conversion ' he realized what
the Roman world and Roman civilization was. And
yet he was destined to be the first of the men who
broke the Roman spell and sent us back to the woods
and fields, and to the unchained soul. I am not an
admirer of Rousseau — am, indeed, a natural anti-
Rousseauite ; but no one could fail to be moved by
the passage to which I am referring. Its context is
also notable. Rousseau invented the Walking Tour,
and the visit to the Pont du Gard was the first im-
portant episode in the first Tour Pedestre (see Sainte-
Beuve, passim). Next, it was in the course of describ-
ing the tour that the phrase ' Amours de Voyage '
was first made known to the world. Incidentally
Rousseau is understood to have invented the French
Revolution, though this in my opinion was a much
less successful effort.

Inflamed and informed with the Roman spirit I
passed to the amphitheatre at Nimes, and by a piece of
good luck was able to Romanize myself almost com-
pletely. In the amphitheatre they were indulging

10 THE RIVER OF LIFE

in ' games ' in the shape of a bull-fight, according
to their comparatively humane manner. There are
no horses tortured in Provence, and the bull is not
killed. He also is given a very fair chance of killing
the men who are wronging him. What moved
me most was the aspect of the arena filled with
people genuinely enjoying a national sport in a place
built for the very purpose by the Romans and
continually used for popular entertainments ever
since. We paid for our tickets at an entrance designed
for the purpose, passed at once along the immensely
high corridor which supports the back rows, turned
up one of the tunnel-like staircases which lead up
to the better-class seats, and found ourselves in about
the middle ring of the giant circle. Below was the
sand-spread arena. Above, the white stone rim of
the amphitheatre drew a ridged line against the clear
blue sky of a fine October day.

Owing to its being an exact circle, the arena looks
small from outside. But, inside, its immensity is
made clear. In the first place, though there were
some three thousand or more onlookers, there was
obviously room for ten times as many. Next, the
people in the top rows looked quite small. Their
faces were not visible. But though the arena was
not very full, the crowd was keen and alert — no
gathering of pedants pretending to be ancient Romans,
but an ' audience ' such as one sees at an important
football match in a provincial town.

One thing to be noted is that at a bull- fight there
is no applause in the proper sense — only a fierce
roar — a matter of the primary instincts, not of the
human emotions. It sounds absolutely animalistic.
It has none of the human ' Hear, hear ! ' or ' Bravo ! '
or ' Encore ! ' It is something between a c howl '
and a ' growl.' The audience do not appear to be

PONT DU GARD AND THE BULL-FIGHT 11

for or against the bull, but to be perturbed, con-
strained, and deranged by the excitement of the
bloody episodes. When one of the bull's tormentors
had to drop his exquisite silk cloak on the ground
while avoiding the rush of the bull, his long, sharp
horns glistening in the sun, there was a particularly
intense outbreak of these primitive sounds from the
throats of the crowd. Again, while the bull sniffed
and pawed, and tried to toss the heap of bright silk
at his feet, came this crude and cruel roar.

Though one knew that the bull would live to fight
another day, it was not an engaging experience for
eyes or ears. However, I am not going to be
' virtuous ' about it, or to appear to be greatly
shocked. I am a great eater of beef and don't want
to be sophistically apologetic about the slaughtered
kine. Still, I did note one thing. A bull-fight,
even of the humane Provencal type, cannot be de-
fended on the Aristotelean Catharsis line of argu-
ment. Terror and pity for the bull, or the man, or
both, are not raised here to be allayed and solved
by the magic purgations of art. Whatever delight
is engendered in us in the arena is purely sensuous
and largely cruel. To sit in safety and see dangers
and sufferings which one does not share is not to be
defended on the plea of c a purgation of the Passions.'

As I am writing about bull- fights, a curious piece
of casuistry comes into my head. When Dean
Stanley was in Seville, like a loyal tourist he ascended
the Giralda Tower. Now it happened that there was
a bull-fight going on at the time and that the arena
was visible from that proud eminence. The guide
pointed out the arena to the Dean and showed him
the bull and the toreadors. Owing to this fact the
story got about that the Dean had, while in Spain,
gone to a bull-fight. One day at a dinner-party an

12 THE RIVER OF LIFE

anxious lady asked him whether it was true. He
replied it was, but added that the bull seen through
his glasses was only the size of a mouse. He
thought, therefore, that he could not fairly be accused
of encouraging or sanctioning cruelty by his presence
at a bull- fight. What is the proper dialectical way
of handling this ' case ' ? I admit it is beyond me.
Does the moral obliquity of looking on diminish as
the square of the distance, or does it remain as great
as in the front row ? It is a very odd point and is
also probably not a true story, but anyway it affords
a capital opportunity for casuistic philosophy.

A more practical, but very strange, matter occurs
to me in regard to bull-fights. I have been told that
in some places — in the Basque country I believe —
cows are fought instead of bulls ; but the results are
not satisfactory. The cows, like the sensible females
they are, refuse to take the sporting view of the
business or to enter into it in the very least as an
amusing exercise. In the ring they become at once
sullen and very dangerous. When they realize what
is up and what is expected of them, they sourly and
deliberately try their hardest to kill their tormentors,
and very often succeed. Therefore cow- fighting is
considered not good enough by the generality of
toreadors. The bull, on the other hand, like the
stupid, vain, fi amatorious ' male, everywhere shows
off and dashes about and generally disports himself
till the dread moment comes and the play turns to
sordid earnest. Alas ! Poor bull ! Poor bull !

In coming back from Nimes, we drove by way of
Tarascon. This meant, of course, to me, as to every
one else, Tartarin — one of the most living people
of literature, not so great, of course, as Falstaff, or
M. Jourdain, or Tartuffe, but in his way as great as
Mrs. Gamp or Mr. Pickwick. But what a confession

A DEPRESSING QUOTATION 13

of bookishness is this ? I cannot see my sights without
thinking of authors — Rousseau and Daudet and the
rest — and when I come upon that glorious apricot-
coloured Castle of King Rene, what but ' Anne of
Geierstein ' must pop into my head ? Yet in truth
Tarascon is a noble place and clothed with what real
and historical associations ! Here is the great ford
of the Rhone. Here the vast hosts of the Cimbri and
the Teutones passed over, before Marius smote them
hip and thigh at the Campi Putridi and left some
three or four hundred thousand corpses on the marshy
sod. It was here too, probably, that Hannibal, his
elephants, his Ethiopians, and his Spaniards crossed
the stream. When one recalls such dread pictures,
even Tartarin seems small and dull.

A DEPRESSING QUOTATION

17th October 1922. — Urbanus, who is fond of throw-
ing literary bombs, came into my room this morning
and suddenly hurled this one at my head. ' What
are the most depressing lines in English poetry ? ' I
object to such questions in principle, though amused
by them in practice. You can't compare things you
can't marshal. But who could assemble all the poems
in the English language 6 for inspection and necessary
action,' and c report in regard to depression, please ' ?
Still a game is a game, even if the subject is literature,
and the way to play it is instant action. The answer
must come back as quickly as does a c punch-ball.'
I, therefore, did not stop to cogitate, but rapped back,
1 Why, of course, the lines in Pope :

4 Who does a kindness is not always kind.
Perchance Prosperity becalmed his breast,
Or else the wind had shifted from the East.'

14 THE RIVER OF LIFE

Unquestionably, if you regard the thought below, and
not its fascinating exhibition, the passage is like so
much of Pope — essentially, I had almost said, in-
sidiously, pessimistic.

Curiously enough, Pope made even Homer depress-
ing. The great and noble passage in which Hector
on his way to the trenches, like so many gallant men
of our day, consoles his wife by telling her that
c unless his number is up ' he will come through safe
enough, and that, if it is, no worrying will be of any
avail :

' Fixed is the term of all the race of earth,
And such the hard conditions of our birth,
No force can them resist, no fight can save,
All sink alike, the fearful and the brave.'

Curiously enough, it is in Wordsworth alone that
we can find anything to match this in the profundity
of its hopelessness. Who can forget the deep sense
of gloom, almost of despair, that comes to us from
the ' Extempore effusion on hearing of the death of
Charles Lamb ' ?

* How soon has brother followed brother
From sunlight to the sunless land ? '

The poet calls up the emotions of Pity and Fear, but
gives us no solution. Instead, he leaves us over-
shadowed by the darkness of his own mood.

If, then, second thoughts were not barred by the
rules, I feel that I ought to have said Wordsworth.
The truth is, Wordsworth in certain ways belongs to
a very different category of poets from that in which
he is generally placed. He was, no doubt, essentially
the good citizen, the man of natural piety and lofty
ideals, the man who ' made a conscience ' of all he
did, like Cromwell's troopers — the very Ironside of
Parnassus. Again, he was the healer of wounds and

THE MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS 15

sorrows, through the glories of the earth and sky, and
the cultivation of man's nobler attributes. Yet at
the same time there was a curious strain in him of
what one might almost call Paganism, or, at any rate,
of Stoicism of the harder type — the type of the fierce
Semitic Zeno rather than of dear, kind, Sunday-
school Marcus Aurelius or suave Seneca. Witness
the lines just quoted and the great apostrophe :

' . . . Great God, it moves us not. I 'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn.'

Above all, the strongest element in him was that
of Mysticism. It has been said, indeed, that the
world will finally remember him as a Mystic. I agree.
By the way, his Mysticism sometimes carried him
very far. Take, for example, the bad, but extra-
ordinarily interesting poem on Premonitions. It
goes c the whole hog ' in regard to the fatalistic ex-
planation of life. If we can be told in dreams and
visions what is coming, what is coming is fated. One
has only to glance at a few of the stanzas to show
how fierce was Wordsworth's fatalism, and also to
prove how badly a great poet could write when he
chose.

THE MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS

19th October 1922. — Every man likes to think him-
self either a prophet or else so skilful at the craft of
ratiocination as to seem a virtual seer. It was, there-
fore, with gusto that I announced to my family as we
walked ' In a public place outside the town wall of
Avignon,' ' There is to be an election here very shortly.'
c How do you know ? Who told you ? ' ' No one
told me. I know it, however.' Then I dramatically
pointed to a large yellow placard headed by the

16 THE RIVER OF LIFE

word ' Mensonges ' in enormous type. ' I learned
the fact from the style and phraseology of that
document, which I perused while you two talked of
Proust's saunterings in the hot, damp labyrinth of his
own thoughts and words, dreams and illusions, in-
ferences and deductions. Such language could only
have come out of an electoral and party combat.'
And so it proved. Since then I have followed with
zest this battle of the Posters. I found it a little
difficult, however, to realize the exact course of
events. The opening shot I did not hear or see, but
it was evidently answered with spirit in a placard
called ' La Seule ReponseS This document, not so
singular and monistic in character as its title might
lead one to suppose, was at once countered by the
famous ' Mensonges ' Affiche. Here the official party,
4 La Municipality Beck,' was vehemently attacked,
and ' La Seule Reponse ' was held up to hatred, loath-
ing, and contempt.

Then Labour took a hand, and a placard in the
most approved old-fashioned high-revolutionary style
appeared, aimed against the municipality of the dark
and mysterious Beck, who is apparently accused,
among other things, of being priest-ridden. This
daring document, headed c The Municipal Battle,'
contains lots of talk about the Republic, and the
rights of man, and the Proletariat, and belabours the
clergy and priestly education in no measured terms.
Finally, there is a Roman touch. Citizens Blanc and
Noir and Bleu are named and magnificently thanked
on behalf of the true Republic for standing firm and
erect before the hosts of Superstition and Tyranny.
Voltaire might have written it. Alas ! I go before
the final struggle, but I would not have missed this
civic combat for a king's ransom. The authentic
spirit of Tartar in has pervaded the whole business.

THE MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS 17

Tartarin and his faithful followers, when they went
out to climb the virgin peaks of Les Alpines, did so
in the temper of the men who have been attempting
Everest. Tartarin marched as if to death, wrapped
round with thick ropes, into the coils of which were
stuck ice-axes and hatchets. When, after much
refreshment, they reached a summit, they set up a
flag- staff and hoisted the Tricolor. It mattered not
that the Alpines are only a few hundred feet above
the plain and present no difficulties. They were
approached in form. So with the Avignon Municipal
Battle, the heroes on either side are, it is clear, acting
some in the spirit of Mirabeau, some in that of the
Girondists, some in that of Robespierre and St. Just.
As an Irishman might say, ' It is a real sham battle,
not a pretence.' Here is Daudet's art. In his de-
piction of Tartarin he never makes the great man
contemptible. Even when we most laugh at him, we
feel that there was no imposture. He really believed
in his high deeds. That is the authentic spirit of the
Midi. Whether it is the sunshine that has made the
miracle, as the Northern French seem to think, I
cannot say. I am content to be delighted with the
result. I have only driven through Tarascon and so
cannot say what its people are like. If, however,
they are like the people of Avignon, there is no need
to search for Tartarins. They grow at every street
corner. You cannot buy the commonest and newest
' antiquity ' without admiring the way in which your
purchase gradually blossoms into ' a museum piece.'
The sense of the grandiose cannot be gainsaid. It
is in the air. And now I am returning to an English
General Election ! ! !

An English General Election differs from its de-
scendant, a Presidential Election in America, in one
most important respect. At a General Election you

18 THE RIVER OF LIFE

have not two personalities to consider, but nearly
two thousand, so many are the three-cornered fights.
The great party issues and slogans are, of course,
predominant ; but ' Vote for the man who was born
and bred in Pent on,' or ' A Pent on man for Penton
and no outsiders,' is a powerful cry. Dr. Johnson's
account of a General Election, written in his last
pamphlet — that curious political swan song intended
to support the North Ministry — is unfair, but none
the less poignant. It is well worth reading.

Johnson generally was inclined to slight elections.
When Boswell asked him whether some blunder or
minor moral peccadillo on the part of a common
friend would injure him, he replied : c No ; it might
perhaps be used against him at an Election.' We
all know so well that kind of mild accusation. It is
given exactly its right place by Dr. Johnson. Some
day it might be interesting to make a catalogue of
Election crimes.

ADOLPHE

20th October 1922. — If I were in England, I should
be thinking of nothing but of what was going to
happen in the House of Commons, and whether Mr.
Lloyd George was going to assume the attributes of
the British oak and be only rooted more deeply in
the political soil by the all- dreaded thunder- stroke.
As it is, I can, with the perfect assurance of delight
and calm, re-read Benjamin Constant's Adolphe.
It is, in the strictest sense of that poor battered word,
admirable. You could not wish it other than it is.
It is not a word too long, and its shortness never
makes it sketchy or vague. It is adequate to what it
attempts in every particular. And its sentimentality
— the quality of its age — is noble and sincere. Though

ADOLPHE 19

poor Adolphe is soon love-weary, one feels that he
would have sacrificed his happiness rather than have
broken Elinore's heart. Yet so great is the art that,
when the conventional solution of her death is
reached, one does not find it conventional. Her
letter of reproach, again, is surely a masterpiece of
its stiffness and Richardsonian rhetoric. The style
in which it is begun is maintained throughout the
book in an unbroken spell. It is as clear as Voltaire,
and yet always gentle and sympathetic. The book's
very faults are attractive. The descriptions are
few, but, when we get them, they have the effect
of an old engraving or a pleasantly-tinted colour-
print. One is peculiarly engaging. It is the first
record in literature, as far as I am aware, of a certain
minor tragedy known to us all. When a non-literary
woman in love with a man of letters has to endure
endless readings of English poetry by the beloved,
the human heart cannot but feel for her a sense of
the profoundest pity. How many unfortunate ladies
since Elinore have had to suffer as she did the weari-
some glories of that arid Paradise !

Constant was a true alchemist in words. Whatever
he touched he turned to gold. Nothing could be
better than his Journal Intime. I have lived for
months on the little entry of four lines in which he
describes his dining with Goethe at Weimar. Here
is his comment. ' Goethe is less of a bon-homme
than any one I ever met.' He gets the world genius
in a line. It is just this want that dehumanized his
poetry and his prose, his fictions and his facts. Goethe
was, or, at any rate, seems to be, an utterly inhuman
creature. Or, rather, he was a most perfect machine
of steel, so hard and so polished that it could not
take the slightest mark from the kindly rough-and-
tumble of life. I remember once seeing in Bond

20 THE RIVER OF LIFE

Street, that highway of wonders, a steel shield made
in the Middle Ages by some cunning artificer of
Damascus or Baghdad which had this quality. Its
owner, a dealer, challenged me to dent it or scratch
it if I could. He offered me for the test an old
Mahratta knuckle-duster dagger with a point as sharp
as a needle, and yet strong and handy. I could
make no impression whatever on the curved steel
shield. My dagger's point simply slid along the
surface, polished like a dull mirror. Such was
Goethe in mind and body. What a man ! What a
life ! He began to write in the reign of Frederick
the Great. He was a middle-aged Divinity of Letters
during the French Revolution, and he watched it
with amusement and zest as a great tragi- comedy of
sentiment and blood. He saw Napoleon rise and fall.
He watched Byron's meteor flash across the sky.
He just outlived Walter Scott and he knew Carlyle.
And all the time, as Constant says, he was ' less of
a bon-homme than any one he ever knew.' The
verdict stands. Yet, if Goethe was an inhuman
machine of a diabolic perfection, he showed us sides
of the world and of human nature, unclassified and
unobserved before. And how great a critic he was
of life and of men ! His riposte to Napoleon when
they met at Erfurt was so great and so exactly
appropriate, that if he had never said anything else
his fame would stand secure. Napoleon clumsily
took him to task for not having given Werther and his
Sorrows a proper end — ' II faut une fin — une
veritable fin? In an instant came the answer, ' I
should have thought that you, Sire, were the last
man in the world to want an end to a Romance.'
The rest is silence. Even Napoleon, who was a
pretty strong, if coarse, dialectician, had to change
the subject and leave the field in possession of the

CITIES OF HONEST PLEASURE 21

other side. Yet all the same he went into action
with Weriher in his pocket !

But I have wandered far from Benjamin Constant.
One might write a whole book in praise of him and
not say enough ; but, alas ! that cannot be.

I hope no one thinks from all this that I am making
any claim to have discovered Benjamin Constant.
It is he who has discovered me, and I am a very
grateful admirer. Constant has, of course, never
lacked followers in his own country, and at the
moment I am told he is the fashion in Paris. His
art and his deep insight into human action are so
just that his writings will always tend to colour men's
minds — even if he draws a tear from them in the
process.

CITIES OF HONEST PLEASURE

22nd October 1922. — It is strange that few, or none,
of the Avignons of the world, and there are and
have been many, have been described for us in
poetry or prose. Narrators are all for high tragedy,
or else for the macabre, the farcical, or the grotesque.
Unless there are spectacles formidables to be recounted
or analysed or sermonized, there is silence. Of the
cities of honest pleasure and the quiet life, diligently
cultivated like a little garden, they have nothing to
say. The reason, I suppose, is that you cannot make
much of a story out of the golden mean.

The only exception that I can recall is to be found in
the work of the oldest of great poets — Homer's de-
scription in the Odyssey of the city of the Phseacians
and its pleasant, persevering, well-to-do people. It
is an exact picture of a community like Avignon.
We see before us the town and its gardens, and the
devotion shown therein to simple pleasures, good

22 THE RIVER OF LIFE

housewifery and the respectable virtues as practised
by a body of Epicurean Bourgeois. Witness the
very serious way in which Nausicaa talks about
her father's ' go-to- Council ' robes and her brother's
clean white shirts for balls. Every one was busy
about clothes, or feasts, or music, or games. Even
the Royal Ingenue, though so deeply touched by her
hero ' come up from the sea,' was not too passionate.
She did not die of love or try to follow her man, but
took her ill-luck reasonably and delicately.

WREN

' Wren struck the ground, and straight a spirit rose
To write in stone and brick his ordered prose.'

1st January 1923. — I walked to-day in the grounds
of the Royal Hospital at Chelsea, and admired how
Wren has got the whole of the English character,
English history, and English greatness into his
building. He has done for us in brick, single-handed
and without ornament, what Le Notre and the em-
bodied artists of Louis xiv. had done for France and
her national characteristics at Versailles.

And lo and behold ! as I walked there came to me
some verses which had nothing whatever to do with
Wren or Le Notre, but exactly put my view of the
subconscious. Remember, it was not my sub-
consciousness, I am sure, that played me any trick
here and, under the pretence of hitting himself, really
hit me. Where the lines came from I cannot profess
to declare without fear of contradiction, but if you
asked me to do my best I should say that they were
the gift of — well, of whoever she is whom Milton called
largely and vaguely, but yet enchantingly, ' my
celestial votaress ' — the lady who deigns her nightly

WREN 23

•
or her daily visitations unimplored. But why, oh

why, in the gardens of Chelsea Hospital, with the
young men from the barracks playing ; Soccer ' on one
side of the grounds, and the eternally delightful
stream of perambulators and nursemaids and skipping
and running little boys and girls ornamenting the
other, while to the west over the river a January sun
descended in sober solemnity ? It was the time
and place for sentiment, but not for a metaphysical
wrangle. But, after all, why not ? Surely that
harmony which we all seek and which poetry — our
own or other people's — alone can give us could not
more easily be helped to birth than in a place fraught
with so magnificent a pathos. Wren was one of the
harmonic heroes of the world, if there ever was one.
Though he wrote his poetry in stone and in brick
rather than in iambics or trochaics, he was not only
one of the stateliest but one of the most direct, stimu-
lating, and appealing of the poets : one of the noble
band who purge our minds, who clear away the storms,
and for whom we may thank God when once more
the blue appears. Wren is one of the physicians of
the soul. In his own day he was perhaps the greatest.
Much as I love Dryden, and glory in Pope, delight,
though with a shudder, in Swift, and own the enchant-
ments of Purcell, I cannot help feeling that from
1670 to 1710 Wren reigns supreme in the arts — at
any rate, in the arts of his native land.

But my celestial votaress, though she may admire
Wren, and though it was at his call that she came to
me, could only lend me a little bugle shaped in imi-
tation of that which Dryden used, as will be perceived
by any one who has the slightest ear for English
verse. And here I may note that I was not thinking
about Dryden when the verses rang in my ears or,
indeed, of anybody. I was not even planning to

24 THE RIVER OF LIFE

write in the heroic couplet. All I will admit of con-
sciousness in the poem is that for many days and
weeks I had been anxious to put something on record
in regard to 4 that affable, familiar ghost ' who
occupies the same leasehold premises with me, and
who, though on the whole we get on so well together,
must not assume that he is c top dog ' merely because
I am civil and well-behaved, and do not make a fuss
about trifles. On the contrary, I regard him with
what Mr. Lear in the Nonsense Books calls ' affection
tempered with contempt,5 and, above all things, hold
that he ought to mind his own business and know
his own place. What his place may be is another
matter, and I have to admit that, if I came to a sort
of ' We-have-done-with-civilities-Sir ' encounter with
him and he asked me to tell him where his place was,
I should not know what to say.

' With so much of apology,' as the gentleman says
who writes in the local paper on some thrilling
question such as the disposal of the town refuse, I
will put on record my metrical view of the sub-
conscious self :

BROTHER OR STRANGER ?

1 He, nor that affable familiar ghost,
Which nightly gulls him with intelligence.9

Brother or stranger, active friend or foe ?
I do not know : perhaps shall never know.
I rule o'er him, and yet he rules o'er me.
I am his bondman. Yet he 's slave to me.

I have not seen his face, and he is blind.

He 's fierce when I am humble. When he 's kind

I most despise him, flout him — almost hate,

But still I see in him the hand of fate.

He frames my future, as he is my past,

And I in him behold the first and last,

BROTHER OR STRANGER ? 25

But kind he can be, and keeps close at hand —
Save when I want him most ; then he will stand
Dark, secret, dumb, and turn the deafest ears
To all my calls to help me still my fears.

When night has come he '11 to my bedside steal,

And sit beside me. He can make me feel

His presence, though I 'm almost drowned in

sleep
And here he shows his best, for he can keep
My memories bright by reading from old notes
Of things forgot, yet things on which he dotes
As precious gems. Often he me persuades
To follow him in spirit through the shades
Of long dead sorrows and of foolish joys
As little worth as children's broken toys.

For he himself is childish — brave in speech,

Though fearful of all ills within his reach.

And yet I love him, in that he supplies

So much that brings lost pictures to my eyes.

If I refrain from frightening him away

By too much asking, he will turn to play

Old games and tell old tales in such strange guise,

I laugh aloud in wonder and surprise.

Not till that dreaded and yet glorious hour
Of dissolution shall I prove his power.
Then we must part, and for a moment's space
(Oh, moment awful I) I shall see his face.
Will it be mine, and shall I fade away
A helpless shadow at the dawn of day ?

Oh no ! 'tis he, 'tis he will cease to be,
And I from my false self at last break free.

Well, my poem is quite serious, and represents a
real mood, and yet I have my doubts as to whether

26 THE RIVER OF LIFE

the Celestial one has not somewhat overdone the
Personification.

The subconsciousness is, I admit, a most useful
discovery. It not only gives us plenty of what
business-men call ' talking points ' in Psychology, but
unquestionably this triumph of analysis has been of
great practical help to the doctors of the mind.
Further, it has helped a great many people out of all
sorts of midnight terrors. Above all, it has dispersed
those horrors of the secret sins of the soul which used
to haunt both the waking and the sleeping hours
of the Puritans. It was these ghostly Familiars who
seized poor Cowper and drove him to madness. Recall
also the young man encountered by Borrow in Wild
Wales. They * lay in his bed and walked up and down
with him.' The poor lad, as innocent as a thrush,
thought he had committed the sin against the Holy
Ghost, and so must perish everlastingly. Happily
the burly and pugnacious Knight Errant of the
Scriptures became his champion and slew the demon
though he straddled right across the way.

But though the separation and recognition of the
Subconscious Self has been of so much practical value,
we must not use it as what I may call a ' poultice-
word.' Many people are apt, that is, to apply it as
the old women in our village used to apply their
' linseed with a touch of mustard.' When I was a
boy there was a widely entertained belief that, if you
' clapped on a poultice,' it ' flew to the affected spot.'
A poultice in those days was held to have a kind of
selective, automatic X-ray action. With unflinch-
ing faith you dumped it on your chest, or your back,
or over ' the pit of your stomach.' The latter region
has always interested me greatly from the rhetorical
point of view, but I have always found it a little
difficult to locate in my physical geography. I never

BROTHER OR STRANGER? 27

could, that is, exactly see where the ' pit ' was, unless
the word ' pit ' was like ' dyke,' which, of course,
means both the ditch and the bank formed out of
the earth which came out of the ditch. However, I
stray from the point, or rather from the pit. All I
want to make clear is that, though properly applied
psychotherapy may prove of incalculable value,
the subconscious hypothesis used as a poultice
has certain very definite inconveniences and even
dangers. Neurotics who think that you can hardly
have too much psycho-analysis are running great
risks.

In one matter, however, the hypothesis of the
dweller beneath the threshold has been not only most
useful, but has brought with its usefulness no draw-
backs. It has helped us to solve the problem of
memory. Clearly the subconscious, or whatever it is
on whose back the world has put that label, has got
charge of our mental and physical note-books. It
makes and guards the card- index of our personality,
and on the whole performs its duties wonderfully
well. It saves the flowerets cropped by time. It
will not let perish a single leaf, or blade of grass, that
grows along the course of the rivers, or in the pleasant
woody places through which we have passed. It
records the most trivial incident as faithfully as some
great tragedy or supreme spiritual exaltation. All is
grist that comes to memory's mill, and (if I may be
allowed a mixed metaphor) down it goes in the per-
manent note-book. It is true that the conscious self
usually gets the card-indexes into an awful muddle,
and soon begins to get distracted and to vapour about
loss of memory and failing powers. Yet even here
the conscious self, if it will only stop messing about
with the files and will leave its Siamese twin secretary
to deal with them, will almost always find the missing

28 THE RIVER OF LIFE

memorandum in time. Don't try to remember a
thing yourself, but invite your subconsciousness. It
will soon make an intelligible extract, and throw it
into the lap of your mind in a way that will seem
miraculous.

Whatever we may think of auto-suggestion — and
I think a great deal more of it than I know how to
say — M. Coue" has done us all good service. He has
made it clear that, if we want to tap the subcon-
sciousness and get all we can out of the nameless
one's powers, we have got to give up the idea of
knitting our brows and grinding our teeth, and
saying ' I will do this ' and ' I will do that.' At any
rate that is not the way to remember anything. It
is only by obeying the old rule, c Stop thinking about
it,' that we can remember the half-forgotten. Then
the subconsciousness gets busy, and we are soon in
possession of the lost name, or the lost date, or the
lost figures.

SHAKESPEARE AND THE SONNETS

Uh January 1923. — One word more on the Sub-
conscious Self, though I lay myself open to be re-
minded that I am like Polly in the play when she
asks Macheath for one more kiss . . . and one more
. . . and one more. . . .

What was in Shakespeare's mind when he used the
words in the Sonnet which I have made the motto
of my verses ? I know the learned will tell me — I do
not want to be such a fool as to mock at them for this,
but accept their learning with the greatest gratitude
— that what Shakespeare meant by the ' affable,
familiar ghost ' was some one who inspired the rival
poet, who was Chapman — or another. Very likely

SHAKESPEARE AND THE SONNETS 29

that is so, but I take it that whether Shakespeare
was writing c sugared sonnets among his private
friends,' urbi et orbi, or was constructing plays for the
stage, he always had — as indeed most poets have,
and even prose writers like ' the humble individual
who now addresses you ' — a double meaning. His
mind was always inclined to put the particular in
terms of the universal. I do not mean that he
consciously said to himself : ' Chapman is not a good
enough poet to write verse so good as that which he
presents as his. There is a ghost behind his poems.
The man, I expect, is Blank. But whoever he is,
he works the oracle almost exactly in the way in
which one's dreams work. They put somethin£
into one's mind during sleep, or when one is carried
away with a poetic idea, which comes in no other
way. By the way, that is a good thought, and I '11
put it into a Sonnet when next I want to dust
Chapman's jacket, and let everybody in the town
see that I realize what is going on. . . . How would
" affable, familiar ghost "do? Not a bad phrase —
" Nightly feeds him with intelligence " is good, too,
but " Nightly gulls him with intelligence " is better.
It would be a capital score off the rival clique to
suggest that they are being taken in.'

I cannot help thinking that, though I have written
crudely, brutally almost, of the workings of the
greatest mind of which the world has record, and
though some day somebody will work on these lines
much better than I have worked, there is an element
in the Sonnet controversy which is too much for-
gotten. After all, Shakespeare was a poet and a man
of letters, and, above all, a master on the technical
side of his art, and finally a magnificent practiser of
what we now call ' presentation.' Though he was
not a very fastidious man and did not take his art

30 THE RIVER OF LIFE

en tragique, he delighted in it. He probably took
pleasure, even when he was personally ' on edge ' as,
let us admit, he was in the case of the Sonnets, in
being always in perfect intellectual control of the
emotional situation. He used that situation to get
in a great deal of pure reflection, pure rhetoric, and,
what is stranger still, pure mysticism, for he was
always a mystic. He did not merely disdain, as
Virgil is said to have disdained, to say a plain thing
in a plain way, but, when he had got a plain and
poignant point to make (I apologize for the allitera-
tion, which is not intentional), he not merely could
not help, but delighted in, a touch of universality.
I have given one example : a still more tremendous
one may be noted. Who can read without a profound
emotion those soul-shaking lines which usher in the
hundred and seventh Sonnet ?

' Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul
Of the wide world dreaming on things to come. . . .'

If there was nothing else left of Shakespeare but
these two lines, one would say confidently that the
man who wrote them was one of the greatest poets of
the world. Yet I believe it is held by one of Shake-
speare's critics that, if you understand the Sonnet
sequence, and what Shakespeare was writing about,
and what must have been in his mind, you will realize
that these divine lines merely mean that there was a
very general idea prevalent in London at the time
of writing that Lord Southampton would soon be
released from his imprisonment !

When I first heard this I was foolish enough to
think that it was very funny, and talked about
pedants and ' Smelfungus,' and poured out a stream
of contemptuous comment. But I know better now.
I see that Shakespeare was practising. He was no

SHAKESPEARE AND THE SONNETS 31

doubt also playing the flute, so to speak, under some-
body's window ; i.e. was quite seriously serenading ;
but at the same time he said to himself : ' Hang it
all, even if one is making the street harmonious,
there is no reason why one should not do it in a way
that will please oneself — and also in a way which
will mean something really big. You only want your
wireless to go about twenty yards, but all the same,
you will do no harm by using a wave-length that will
be heard not merely at the " Orked Isles " or in the
" Mountains Pyranee," but, say, also in the colony
of Virginia. If William Strachey, sometime verse
comrade of dear old Campion, and my very good
friend, could hear me in the Bermudas 1 or at any
place within the lands of the Virginia Charter, all the
better. He won't care about the objective part at
all, but the subjective side of it will interest him
tremendously.'

But, good Heavens ! Where has my punt drifted
in the swirl of the wood's stream ? I began by writing
a Diary, and here I am hung up in the snag of the
Sonnets. Unless I push off, I shall be getting a hole
through the side of my boat and shall sink ever-
lastingly, for that same Sonnet snag has wrecked
more light craft than anything else on this blessed
river. ' A Desultory and Digressive Diary ' is all
very well as a phrase, but when it means this kind of
thing, the police or the public or somebody ought to
interfere. ' It didn't ought to be allowed ; it didn't.'
That 's what the Fishermen on the bank will be saying
when they find my body.

1 The dates do not fit, but that is of no great importance, for I am only-
illustrating, not dogmatizing.

32 THE RIVER OF LIFE

THE CHILD AND THE FLOOD

6th January 1923. — I heard a delightful and
pathetic story the other day, a story which proves
what an uncharted stream of ocean we are all
embarked upon, how thickly our eyes are bandaged,
and how little help we manage to give even to those
young explorers whom we want to go so much further
than we have gone, and, above all, to whom we wish
a prosperous voyage.

A friend the other day was trying to tell and
explain the story of the Flood to a gallant little girl
listener of three years old. But that, though one of
the best stories in the world, is not an easy one to tell if
you are not a practised and Broad Church theologian.
When the child asked why all these poor people were
drowned instead of being saved, she was given the
conventional explanation that they had been very
wicked and that God was angry with them, and
therefore He drowned them all. The child — splendidly
unorthodox — expressed her sense of the explanation
quite plainly : ' Oh, naughty God ! '

How noble, and, if I shall not be thought irreverent
and too anthropomorphic, how pleased the Almighty,
the Omniscient, the Universal Father, must have
been with that dear cry of the heart ! In intention
no more glorious incense was ever burned upon the
altar of the Most High. The child who so flatly
repudiated the jealous God who could take revenge,
and so horrible a revenge, and drown men, women,
and children because they had angered Him, was but
honouring the true God. But I am trying to put
what Renan put so much better and with so noble
a pathos in one of his philosophical dramas. A
foolish angel talks like a French ecclesiastic of the
'sixties about those c wicked men of science who deny

THE CHILD AND THE FLOOD 33

God.' The Divine interlocutor points out to him that
those noble souls who seem to deny Him are the men who
serve Him best, and best understand Him in the spirit.

It is the men who have made God after their own
miserable and sordid image, and have clothed Him
with hideous human attributes, who are the
blasphemers. The men who deny those attributes
of shame are the men who truly praise God. The
child whose mind was revolted by the idea of a
threatening, punishing, torturing, cursing Deity was
the true interpreter of the Godhead. It was she
who was in spiritual liaison with the Divine. God
was with her most when she so courageously con-
demned Him. How well she hit those fierce
worshippers in the dark who in the dim past and out
of their own acrid minds constructed the story of
Noah's Flood.

Happily the child in question had round her those
who were able to feel that out of the mouths of babes
and sucklings come the truths that set us free.
Children and savages are often the best of theologians.
Was it not a savage pupil at the very beginning of
his conversion who posed the missionary with the
question : ' Why not God kill great big black devil ? '
Again — and this is specially apposite in this context
— it was a Kaffir who made so deep an impression on
Bishop Colenso by his questions on the Old Testament
that he turned his Episcopal teacher into a true
Broad Churchman. The incident is roughly but
poignantly commemorated in a mid - Victorian
limerick :

* To the heretic Bishop of Natal,
Whose doubts on the Deluge were fatal :
Said an infidel Zulu,
" Do you believe that, you fool, you ? "
" No, I don't," said the Bishop of Natal.'
c

34 THE RIVER OF LIFE

ON HESITANCY IN CATS

* The Dog will come when he is called,
The Cat will walk away.'

9th February 1923. — This is my birthday. I sup-
pose I ought to write solemnly, or at any rate solidly
and soberly, about my failures and responsibilities,
and the vanities and futilities of life, and how glad
I ought to be that my expectation of life at sixty-
three is only about twelve years or less. Well, I am
not going to do anything of the kind. I am going
to write about cats.

The connection may seem remote, or satirical —
there are male cats as well as female — or far-fetched ;
but all the same there is a real connection between
this sixty-third anniversary of the day when these
now bespectacled eyes first opened on the sphere
and the shrill birth- cry proclaimed my first Adsum.

All Stracheys love cats, ' this side of idolatry ' :

* The reason no man knows : Let it suffice
That will in us is censured by our eyes.'

Therefore when I made the population of the world,
on the 9th of February 1860, number cc+l9 the cat-
lovers, potential and actual, numbered y+1. There-
fore my birthday is a cat day, and suitable to an
analysis of cat psychology.

The great thing to remember about cats, and
especially young Tom cats — female cats are usually
too much occupied with their nurseries to be very
psychic, and old Tom cats too fierce, perverse, and
pompous — is that they have the despotic complex
very highly developed. Your young Tom cat, black,
sleek, effeminate, precocious, dainty, dictatorial,
dandified, wayward, and superficially good-mannered,

ON HESITANCY IN CATS 35

but really boorish and offensive, is a pattern for
young Neros. When ' Smut ' gives looks of lazy
approval to a new basket lined with silk and eider-
down and sniffs it with a weary elegant nose, I hear
the languid intonations of the Young Nero when he
entered the just- finished Golden House on the Palatine,
' At last I begin to live like a human being.' Some-
how that remark of cosmic insolence always seems
to be a stronger ground for a capital sentence on the
implacable, rose- crowned, beautiful autocrat than the
murder of his mother. Poor Seneca's immolation
can be excused in any case. Your true Stoic calls
for the knife with each breath he takes in or exhales.
The non- Stoic, with a headache due to neglecting the
moderation and abstinence of the Sect, feels every
exhibition of the Philosopher's healthful, temperate,
and sane bodily habit as an unforgivable insult. ' If
this fellow 's right, we 're all wrong. Let 's get the
nearest axe and go for him. How dare he sit and sing
like a horrid little self-conscious virtuous bird and
we " so full o' care " ? It 's unbearable, and we
won't bear it.'

But young Tom cats are one and all ' Neros after a
night out,' and that is why they often look at us with
such wicked eyes, and obviously would kill us if they
had the physical strength, which, thank Heaven,
they have not.

If they had, what pleasure we should lose ! The
Persian poet who said that the Almighty made the
cat c in order that mankind should have the felicity of
caressing the Tiger,' got the whole cat problem in one
supreme lightning- flash of creative comment. When
I go to the Zoological Gardens and see the Tigers,
Leopards, Pumas, and other ' greater Cats,' I am
driven half- crazy by my desire to stroke them, play
with them, fondle them, and roll over with them in

36 THE RIVER OF LIFE

pursuit of a ball, a reel, or a bolster. So great is the
fascination, so tremendous the emotion of play
roused in me, that, but for the catharsis afforded by
the sleek, spring- clawed, green-eyed philosopher of
the area waiting for me on the mat at home, I could
not endure the excitation of the Tiger's enchanting
eyes and aspect. A rough-and-tumble play with a
cat produces, however, a complete purgation of this
wild passion. After it, and even a scratch or two,
I am happy again, and no longer want to stroke
the black leopard, Satan, marked : c Dangerous.
Visitors are particularly requested not to, etc., etc'

Another strongly marked autocratic and despotic
quality possessed by the cat is its habitual and in-
eradicable hesitation. The cat, like all persons of
uncontrolled will and irresponsible egotism, is almost
incapable of choice. Governed by no moral con-
siderations, rules of conduct, sense of duty, but utterly
and depravedly self-regarding, it is always impaled
on the disreputable dilemma of ' To be or not to be.'
Shilly-shally— Shall I ? Shall I ?— is the dread ghost
that haunts the conscieneeless egotist. There is no
still, small voice to remind him of his Duty. He only
thinks how to secure ease and happiness for himself.
As Lord Halifax points out in his analysis of Charles n.,
the Hedonist Autocrat ended by being unable to
choose even his own mistresses. The fear of friction
made him lean always to the line of least resistance.
Therefore, if ' Poor Nelly ' or another would have
resisted expulsion less fiercely than the Political
Junta who wanted her expelled, Charles would have
given in. ' Anything for a quiet life ! ' made him a
Royal slave.

There are plenty of other examples of hesitating
tyrants. For example, Xenophon's inimitable Dia-
logue with the Tyrant of Syracuse is moist with

SPIRITUALISM 37

the despot's clammy impotence of mind. He com-
plains of everything. Again, the hesitancy of
arbitrary and limitless power is embalmed in the
Biblical aphorism which so much fascinated Bacon —
1 The heart of the King is inscrutable.' So is the
heart of the cat. As I write, I hear my private Mr.
Shandy exclaim : ' All which you can read by im-
plication or proclamation in the Annals of Tacitus.'
And then comes the inevitable voice of some voluble,
inglorious Yorick : * I can read it as well in my
Matthew Arnold.'

' So Tiberius might have sat
Had Tiberius been a cat.'

This gift, or failing, of hesitancy in cats was to be
seen at its height in our ' Visiting Cat.' But if I
were to analyse him I must first describe how he
came by his name and how he came to us — if the
word c came ' is not too strong for his partial and
transitory favours, and irrelevant and irregular visi-
tations. A welfare or health visitor far less casual
than he would have lost the job at the end of the first
month. For this story, however, I have not time or
inclination to-day ; and probably next time I have
the opportunity of leisure for my Riverine Diary the
current will have taken me away from cats ! So
farewell to that gay and heartless, heart-breaking
charmer, the Visiting Cat. The last time I saw him in
Eaton Square he cut me dead ! His soul was as black
as his glossy coat.

SPIRITUALISM

20th February 1923. — I have been discussing
Spiritualism in the train. Our want is new senses,
not new facts. Where we fail is in our powers of

88 THE RIVER OF LIFE

perception. We only know what we feel, see, and
hear, and we only feel, see, and hear those things
which are able to impress our imperfect senses. The
rest — and who dare put limits thereto ? — we rightly
call invisible, inaudible, intangible, but, remember,
not non-existent. Perhaps some day these unknow-
ables may become knowable, but only by the develop-
ment of a new sense or senses. Then we shall know
more, though still not all. Beyond the newest sense a
newer sense will always be required.

Till then the courteous revelations of spirits can be
of little or no avail. Even spirits can only instruct
us relatively and comparatively. As things are now,
they can enlarge our knowledge, but not give us
knowledge new in kind. How could they ? Try it
by an example. A spirit comes to you and perceives
that you are ignorant and unteachable because you
do not understand what he means when he speaks of
an ' Inogotensoutus.' And when he tries to explain
what it is, he fails and becomes tongue-tied. He has
nothing to explain it by, or to compare it with. It
belongs to an entirely new plane of consciousness. It
stands by itself, incomparable, unrelated, incalculable,
incommensurable, and therefore incommunicable.
He cannot say : ' You know what a thought is. You
know what an experience is. Well, an Inogotensoutus
is something between the two, and yet different. It
is like each of them, except that it is half- volitional
and half-intuitive, and yet effectively automatic. I
fear, however, that until you have something analo-
gous to a new pair of eyes on the top of your head
able to report to you the now invisible, I shall not be
able to make it clear to you that two and two are
in my sphere only very occasionally four.'

But I have lost touch already. I cannot even
suggest the difficulty of communicating knowledge

NORTH WALES 39

new in kind without leaning on comparisons and
understood relations, and so getting on false scents.
Once more, all I could say, if I were a spirit, is : 'I
can't tell you anything because you have not yet the
sense perceptions which would enable you to com-
prehend what I said. Some day you may have them,
but till then, Farewell ! '

NORTH WALES

30th March 1923. — The Spring is upon us and
thousands of anxious families are now debating where
they shall go for their Easter holiday. No doubt
the Englishman, man or woman, boy or girl, is a
rover at heart, and wants to go abroad in general
and to Italy in particular. ' Italiam petimus ' —
' 'Tis Italy we seek ' — so said Virgil, and so in theory
say all of us. But the arch of azure sky that spans
the deep-blue Spezia Bay and the coves and inlets
that rival the peacock's neck in hue are a long way off.
Railway journeys are hot and hotels expensive.
There are also a thousand other reasons, of health,
purse, and person which make for casting the holiday
lot into the lap of the British Isles.

When my advice is asked as to what part of the
aforesaid Isles is best for a holiday, I say without a
moment's hesitation, ' Go to North Wales.' Anyway
I am going there myself this year for an Easter
vacation. If you love the mountains and the sea,
and scenery of high romance in miniature, but not
the less grand and soul- shaking for that, you will
bless the hand that directs you to Merioneth and
Carnarvon. North Wales is, of course, no discovery
of mine. It is known, worshipped, and enjoyed by
hundreds of thousands of Englishmen. Yet I dare
venture to say, ' By none is it enough beloved.'

40 THE RIVER OF LIFE

People who go to North Wales and like it, and get
great pleasure thereby, seldom realize, as fully as they
should, how incomparable a heritage of beauty we
have at our very doors. We somehow think it looks
silly to be enthusiastic over scenery unless it is at
least five hundred miles off. Yet I can say truthfully
of North Wales that it can make out a very good case
when challenged by Greece or Italy. Though you
cannot tread glacier-ice, glissade down a snow-slope,
or jump a crevasse, you can get as delightful, as
fascinating, mountain walks in Wales as those afforded
by the proudest Alps or the most romantic Apennines.
The smallness of the scale never troubles one, so
exquisite and so justly proportioned is the hill
scenery of our most westerly coastline. So magical
are the mountain forms, so clear the lakes and tarns,
so boldly break down to the sea the torrent-tongued
ravines, so august is the pomp of the tides as they
race inland up the rockbound estuaries and fill the
hollows of the hill with their sea-music. Even the
expert mountaineer when once he is out on a Welsh
hillside is transported. Indoors he may be troubled
by the thought that when he has walked for four hours
he will not have risen more than two thousand five
hundred feet above the sea. When, however, he is
on the slopes and rocks of Snowdon, Cader Idris, or
the Glyders, he will not only smile at his chamber
grumblings, but feel heartily ashamed of them. He
will, if he is a scholar, remember that there are ten-
lined poems in the Greek Anthology as worthy of our
wonder as the mightiest epics. If he is a lover of
painting, he will recall how the great miniaturists
give us as much character in the reverse of a locket
as we can find in the ample canvases of Vandyck or
Sir Joshua.

TREMADOC BAY 41

TREMADOC BAY

31st March 1923. — If I am asked, ' Assuming North
Wales, what part of North Wales ? ' what shall I
reply ? To answer too closely or, at any rate, to
publish too close an answer would be a dangerous
venture. Little towns and ' pleasantly situated
villages ' with ' attractive inns ' look amiable and
innocent beyond words as they bask in the sunlight
or bare their bosoms and their sandy beaches to the
moon. But when they are roused by comparison to
a rival, and the competitive goat is raging on his
native rocks, they are as fierce as the tigress over
her cubs.

I want to go again and again to many parts of
Wales and am anxious to pass the streets of its towns
without being stoned !

Still, I can with moderate safety venture upon a
generalization or two. Here is as much as I dare.
Go where the mountains meet the sea. Then you
will get the best of both worlds. To transmute Sir
Charles Sedley, we may say of the coast of North
Wales between Aberystwyth and Carnarvon :

1 All that by tourists is adored
In thy dear self I see,
For the whole Earth can but afford
The mountains and the sea.'

In this enchanted and enchanting land the
mountains come down to the shore in troops.
Those that gather round Tremadoc Bay can boast
as exquisite outlines as any in the world. Stand
on a fine day on the little hill above the tiny harbour
of Abersoch, a miniature in a miniature, and look

42 THE RIVER OF LIFE

across to the stately sweep of mountains that encircle
this inland sea. You will see no nobler, no more
perfect frame to your sea- picture even in the Attic
landscape. The Bay of Eleusis is justly renowned
throughout the world, and throughout the ages.
Its nobility, its graciousness, its compelling charm
touch all beholders. The hue of the violet lingers on
the hills and deeply dyes the sea. I know and love
both bays — Eleusis and Tremadoc. It calls no blush
to unite them. I can say without hesitation that I
have seen Moelwyn and Cynicht, the line of hills
above the Roman Steps, Cader Idris and the daughters
that crouch around her throne, show a tint of blue
deeper and even more mysterious than those on the
Hellenic summits. What the hills of North Wales
lose in definition, they gain in magic. And yet on
occasion they can be as clear-cut as if it was the
Mediterranean that reflected them. I have seen the
hills of Tremadoc Bay, against a sunset sky of
Prussian blue, look as if they were cut out of
block tin.

So much for the spell of North Wales, the spirit
that waylays, the Merlin that slips out from behind
the Druids' Stone, or comes out of the shadow of
the oak grove to tell of Uther Pendragon, the Lady
of the Waste Lands, or the Queen of North Galis.
The man who wants to see mediaeval castles cannot
see them better than at Carnarvon and Conway. I
have seen many castles in France, in Italy, in
Switzerland, in the Tyrol, and in Palestine, which,
strangely enough, is the real place to see the archi-
tecture of chivalry ; but I have never beheld anything
more impressive than the two great strongholds just
named. And to these I may add Harlech, for,
though it cannot boast of such stone girdles as these
immense enceintes, it is an exquisite piece of com-

NORTH WALES 43

paratively late architectural fortification. Next, the
man who likes groves of oak and rocks and grottos
such as are described by Theocritus, or portrayed by
Poussin or Claude Lorrain, will find them to per-
fection in North Wales. Then there are the Lynns
or little mountain lakes. They are scattered broad-
cast over North Wales. Perhaps some of the most
beautiful are on the little ridge of hill that lies between
the Tan-y-Bwlch Estuary and the green carpet of
the Morfa of the Glaslyn. Again, suppose you want
to see real stepping-stones ; personally, I want to
see them often and a good deal, for there is an
extraordinary charm about them, as the old water-
colour painters felt so keenly. Well, the best step-
ping-stones I have ever seen are not very far from
Tremadoc, near a mill where they make the true
Welsh flannel. These are stepping-stones worthy
of a Consul, as Virgil would have said — huge blocks
as big as that mystic Lochlaver on which Henry n.
stepped so boldly and in spite of the Bardic curse.
If you want Roman roads that are cast across
mountain slopes as a fly- fisher casts his involuted
line, you will find them nowhere better than where
the road leads from the Croesor Valley to the bridge
on the highway which spans the Glaslyn at the
entrance of the Pass. Under the mountain of c The
Black Rocks ' runs the Roman road, and at the top
of the mountain aforesaid you will discover some of
the most delicious of the egg-cup tarns of Wales.
To sit by, to bathe in, to fish in, the tarns of Wales
are without rivals. The bareness of most of them,
the clear water, the clean grey rocks, the pale flowers,
have a reticence and vague reserve which is astonish-
ingly moving.

Personally, if I am to invoke a Lady of the Lake,
I shall call up her of Llyn-y-Gau, the marvellous

44 THE RIVER OF LIFE

lake that hides in a fold of Cader Idris. There some
necromantic artist of the hills has spread a scene
which, if we saw it in a picture, we should say was too
picturesque, and that Nature had been overdressed.
Yet we do not say so when we see the place itself.
Here not only are the emotions that depend upon the
eyes stirred to their depths, Llyn-y-Gau invokes
also those that depend upon our ears. The great,
precipitous cliffs, which shut in the lake in what is
almost a semicircle, give back one of the most
wonderful echoes that can be heard anywhere. You
sing a chord as you stand by a big block half in and
half out of the pale green water of the tarn, and it
comes back to you echoed, re-echoed and again
re-echoed as if a full orchestra and chorus were
playing and singing for your delight, or perhaps, to
be more exact, as if some tremendous Vox Humana
stop had been drawn out by a Titan organist.

There still remains to be said that the people of
North Wales are worthy of their scenery. They are
sensible, friendly, and, above all, a musical and
poetical people, and they love and eherish not only
the tunes and lyrics of their land, but also its wonder-
ful legends, magical and historical. Every waterfall,
every stone, every mountain pasture has its own
story. You ask why the Croesor Valley is called
Croesor and the answer comes back, 6 Because a
great queen in the olden days waited there while the
battle raged in the valley below.' And then word
has come to her that the Prince, her only son, had
fallen. In her agony she raised her arms above her
head, and exclaimed, ' This is my cross ! '

And so the valley through which the Roman road
runs, where doubtless many battles were fought,
is now the Valley of the Cross. The North Welsh
people love easy social intercourse and desire both to

NORTH WALES 45

give pleasure and to take it. And here comes the
only warning that is necessary for those who go to
spend a holiday among them. In their desire to
give pleasure to the visitor, people in North Wales,
whether lodging-house keepers, farmers, or the people
whom you casually encounter in the road, will never
have the heart to depress you. The result is that you
are always told it is going to be fine or that it is only
a step to the waterfall, or hill- top, or lake, or ruin
that you want to see, when in reality the ' step ' is
at least three miles, and very likely six. They know
you are out for pleasure, and they cannot bear to
dash your hopes. Indeed, it has been whispered that
a Welshman has sent unfortunate tourists across a
piece of the coast sown with quicksands ' for fear of
disappointing such a very kind and nice lady and
gentleman.'

2nd April 1923.— ^4 Traitor to Wales? I have
written about North Wales from my heart, and now
I am beginning to wonder whether I have not been a
traitor to one of the things that I love best in the
world. But no ! that is a miserable, selfish, monopoly
thought. No man has a right to keep the knowledge
of beautiful things to himself in order that he may be
the surer of his own enjoyment. But there is a duty,
and a very important duty, upon those who tell the
secret of the hills and broadcast such things as I
have written. That duty is never to speak about
the beauties and natural scenery of districts like
North Wales without urging in the strongest possible
way the duty of those who enjoy it to determine that
they will not only themselves protect those beauties
in every way, but that they will, be the trouble great
or small, do their best to get other people to protect
them. And this in the case of North Wales will

46 THE RIVER OF LIFE

become urgent in the next few years. In North
Wales the people of England have an asset in the
balance-sheet of beauty of incomparable value, some-
thing precious beyond words. But this precious
thing can, alas I be very easily killed.

In the matter of Mont Blanc, Mont Rosa, or the
Matterhorn, the scale is too enormous and man too
puny to make his scratches on the landscape of any
vital importance. In Wales a few months' work
can utterly destroy some perfect piece of natural
beauty. One thumb-mark on a miniature will ruin it
for ever. The thumb-marks on the lordly canvases
of Tintoretto, Raphael, and Michelangelo are injuries
that can be ignored. Hence, I would implore every
man who reads these lines, and who from them is
induced to go to North Wales, to swear an oath to
himself to be a protector of the beauty that he has
unveiled. Let him treat the mountains, lakes, rivers,
and streams of North Wales as a damsel in distress.
Let him play Theseus to her Andromeda. The
great, ugly, lazy, poisonous dragon of vulgarity,
squalor, folly, and futility, hung round with scales of
tin cans, glass bottles and bits of greasy newspaper,
spitting forth his foul and noxious pollutions, is
already worming his way to devour Andromeda.
Cut him down, drive him back, put up barriers against
his insidious advance. That is a duty, and a duty
which can be perfectly well achieved. There is
nothing more futile, and therefore more wicked, than
hopelessness in a good cause. The man who says
6 It is no use. You can't stop the destruction of
beautiful things,' is as bad as the actual denier of
some natural beauty.

THE LAND OF HEART'S DESIRE 47

THE LAND OF HEART'S DESIRE

3rd April 1923. — I am living in the house of my
son-in-law and yet my true friend, whom I will call
4 Vitruvius,' for he chances to be an architect. He
is to be counted happy in many particulars, but in
none more than in the possession of the most beautiful
view in these islands, and he has lent it to me to
enjoy for a month. To begin with, his is a mountain
view. Enchanting are the prospects over river
valleys where a broad stream flows past green pastures
or golden corn-lands, bridled here by a noble bridge
and there guarded by some grey Castle, Court, or
Hall, bordered here by bulrushes and there by velvet
lawns that slope to the water's edge in peaceful pomp.
Full of health and ease of mind is the sweep of the
green downland or of wooded hills, whose feet are
firm set in an English champaign. Happy are wide
fields, threaded by winding brooks with farms and
cottages and a church spire deep embowered in
congregated elms and oaks. Glorious is the sun
shining on the level fields of ocean, on wet sands, and
on black and glossy rocks. But to the soul that had
once been sanctified by the touch of the mountains
no prospect can ever be wholly satisfactory which
does not show the true mountains — not mere hills or
downland, but highlands, where the blue shadows
mark the valleys, where the rocks push back in
austere repulse the endearments of the grass and
flowers, where the water leaps with its careless
prowess from crag to crag, where the clouds sulk in
solemn gloom or cluster in white crowds to break
and part, where the necromancer of the mist draws
his wayward and mysterious veils, here letting
through a peak and there allowing a glimpse of bare

48 THE RIVER OF LIFE

shoulder or golden crown. Clearest and most char-
acteristic mark of all are those high platforms on the
mountain-side where first comes the dawn and where
the sunset lingers still unspent. But why labour a
definition ? He who has once heard the call of the
mountains, who feels the mountain nostalgia and who
loves them without asking why, will never be in any
doubt as to what hills deserve the name of mountains.
If and when they are real mountains, it is pretty
enough to call them hills. It is not a question of
mere height. It is not a question of geology. It
is not one of snow-line or tree-line. It is mainly one
of form. The mountain wants wild open wastes
for the play of wind and water, places which avert
their ken not merely from half but from the whole
of human fate — places where nothing matters but
the roar of the waterfall, the drift of the clouds, the
hardness of the rocks, the pathlessness of the grass.
More especially are we in these islands beholden to
North Wales for the true mountain forms. They
cover only a narrow plot on the map. They have no
perpetual snow. Yet who has failed to hail as
mountains Snowdon and his fellows, Cynicht and
Moelwyn, Moel-ddu and Moel Hebog, the twin peaks
above the Roman Steps, or the magic amphitheatre
of precipice that enshrouds the most exquisite of the
tarns of Cader Idris ?

And now think of the happy fortune of ' Vitruvius.'
The great ones of the hills are his home friends and
come trooping into his very garden. From the
terrace of his grey Plas, old and mysterious as its hills
and as its owner's race, your eyes see Snowdon,
disposed in range beyond range of violet shadow.
Chivalrous Cynicht honours him by bowing a lordly
head at the end of the vista from his orangery. We
have heard whispers from Versailles and Hampton,

THE LAND OF HEART'S DESIRE 49

from Wren and Le Notre even, in this narrow glen.
Moelwyn lends his ample and friendly breadth of
shoulder to fill a gap in this glorious pageant of
mountain and of flood. Moel Hebog is the back-
cloth of the scene. It is too tiny for such language ?
A thousand times c No.' As I have said already in
this Diary, a miniature may be as full of nobility
and feeling as an acre-large canvas of ' furious
Tintoret.' Sydney Smith thought himself vastly
clever when he made his famous comment on the
Turner water-colour. Wordsworth and Sir George
Beaumont were exclaiming with delight : c What
grandeur ! what breadth ! ' c Yes,' said the common-
sense wit, 6 about a quarter of an inch.' Yet it was
the poet and the painter, not the laughing philosopher,
who went thence justified. Turner could put the
range of the Alps on a vignette the size of a crown-
piece. c Vitruvius's ' view could not be improved if
his mountains were raised to Andean heights. Great
and small, they are mountains, and salute the sea as
equal with themselves.

One might think that Nature would consider that
she had done enough for ' Vitruvius ' in giving him
the best front prospect in the British Isles.

But there are some people for whom apparently
Nature cannot do too much. In any case, Nature's
bounty to c Vitruvius ' did not stop at the front- door.
Go out at the back entrance, turn through a wicket-
gate between two manorial pillars of grey- green
slate, up a little rising path, past a dry cascade,
through a tiny plantation, down a gentle slope on the
other side, and you are transported into an entirely
new world — one which has, apparently, no connection
with the great panorama of mountains just catalogued.
Yet in its own way it is as distinguished, as fascinat-
ing, as dramatic as the great view of Snowdon seated

D

50 THE RIVER OF LIFE

first among his peers. How shall I describe what lies
at ' the back of beyond,' i.e. at 6 Vitruvius's ' back-
door ? Imagine an inspired impresario who wants to
mount an opera with a mediaeval story embellished
with scenes of chivalry — a Tourney or a Court of Love,
held on a noble mead, bright with the coloured
pavilions of the Sovereign and his Court, with a
grassy mound from which the Queen of Beauty can
look down upon the lists, and with three or four
green valleys or avenues of approach, down which
the knights can come, riding two by two, their coats of
mail glistening, their pennons streaming from their
lances, their squires behind, and their pages, bright
as butterflies, in gules, azure, argent, vert, and sable,
at their sides, hand on rein. If he knew the House
among the Hills, the impresario would have no trouble.
He would simply say : ' Go to the home of " Vitruvius "
and ask them to show you the Tourney ground.
That is your second set.5 In truth, art could add
nothing to the scene. Everything is there ready for
waiting except the men, the horses, and the tents.
Imagine a large and shallow bowl of the most perfect
green grass of about five acres, with the sides of the
bowl not too steep, but steep enough to give good
standing in gradation for the crowd, and marking well
the barriers of the ground. Beyond these slopes lie
groves of oak not too thickly grouped. On one side
great grey rocks push through the turf, which is thick
and green like a high Alpine pasture, and form natural
buttresses for a green mount jutting out into the
Tourney field — fit place whence to look down upon the
passage of arms. Just opposite is the chief valley and
avenue of approach — a broad stream of emerald
green flanked by more groves of mountain oak, small
but of good form and figure, with here and there a
grey rock, placed as it were to mark the bounds. As

THE LAND OF HEART'S DESIRE 51

the valley retreats, it turns, and its course is lost to
view. It tantalizes while it enchants. So with the
lesser green valleys to the right and left of the rocky
mount of the Queen of Beauty. It really is almost too
perfect, too sophisticated, too theatrical, and yet all
the time a simple Welsh pasture. Yes, but that is it.
It is Welsh. It is endowed with that natural magic
of the Celt which makes all the world a mirage, if not
a miracle.

4 Vitruvius's ' front view and back view are his by
right of birth, and still more by right of appreciation.
He has taken seizin of the beauty and glory of the
prospect, as the knight of old by the delivery of a
clod of earth cut from the glebe — the primitive symbol
of extreme possession. Moreover, he has cut the
bench-mark of his own mind and wit upon the hem,
as it were, of the hills — cut it in his fountains and
ponds, his orangery and his pillars, his gates, his
steps, and his balustrades. He has raised the column.
He has bent the arch. He has swelled the terrace.
He has sunk the grotto. And the mountains have
lent him a kindly approval. But beyond his gates
and his sign-manual, ' Vitruvius ' is free of all the
hill-country of North Wales — of all that the tourist
sees and of much that he has not eyes to see. He
can walk that noble path which winds up Snowdon
by the old copper mines, where the water of the
torrent lies in the rock basin like liquid emeralds,
and the precipices wear a nobler, austerer beauty.
Again, if he and the sylvan huntress at his side choose
the happy hour when the tourist is at lunch, he can
tread the popular but none the less delightful path
that rounds the shoulder of the mountain from the
Llanberis Pass. These things the tourist sees. What
for the most part he passes by without seeing is the
enchanted country which lies between the sea and the

52 THE RIVER OF LIFE

Roman Steps. To follow up the stream that hurries
from the little Lake of Cwm Bychan to the tidal
lagoon at Mocros is to find oneself in a land of high
romance — a land of dashing waters, flowery meads,
arching groves, grey-green rocks, moss-grown stones,
elusive paths, and whispering rivulets that talk
between the stones as they run. It is a land of
classic fable — the land from which the painters of
the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the
schools of Poussin and Claude, must surely have taken
their inspiration. Here is a perpetual suggestion
of Arcadia and the Thracian highlands. One would
not be surprised to see a shepherdess come from
behind one of the huge erratic blocks that stud the
meadows. Rather one is surprised that she is not
there, with a demi- divinity beside her. In truth,
the country is like a series of landscape backgrounds
in an illustrated edition of Lempriere's Dictionary.
Here is the pool in which Narcissus caught sight of his
own face ; there the field where Hyacinthus played
quoits, with a peep of mountain behind, a stream on
one side, and a sheepcote in the middle distance.
The Dryads look with half-averted faces from this
clump of oaks ; the Nereids from the tumbling,
splashing water ; the Oreads fleck with flying feet
that sloping lawn.

THE PORTMADOC PLAYERS

11th April 1923. — I have always regarded the
Welsh as natural and predestined votaries of the
drama. They have all the qualities required. They
are comely and distinguished, and slightly melancholic
in appearance. They have about them the air of
past sorrows and losses nobly endured. Their bearing
is that of people of old family who have come down

THE PORTMADOC PLAYERS 53

in the world — and so, perhaps, they have — but who
are too well bred to feature the fact. Then, they
love eloquence for its own sake and are themselves
eloquent. Trifles by them are clothed in glowing
phrases. They are, indeed, true wizards of words,
and glory in their use. Mystics they are by nature,
and make and tend secrets for their own sake and for
their intrinsic beauty, as do the men and women of
the drama. Music is a large part of their lives, and
music is an unwritten language, like the gestures
and the other inarticulate stimulants of stagecraft.
Another fact of great import in this issue is that they
are born conversers. They talk for the pure pleasure
of it, not merely as eighty per cent, of the English
do, in order to convey information — as to time-
tables, the weather, the crops, and the condition of
South-Eastern Europe or Anatolia. But they are
dialecticians quite as much as talkers, and enjoy the
display of give-and-take in argument. Legends,
Memories, Stories old and new, are never distant from
their minds, and they invest all things with an atmo-
sphere of romance. Lastly, and this brings them
instinctively to the footlights, they love costume and
colour, and so understand how to give appropriate-
ness to dress. The first thing you notice after Ruabon
Junction is the delight and taste in colour shown in
the women's dresses.

Knowing and feeling these things, I was not
surprised to hear that the drama is being developed
in Wales by leaps and bounds. In North Wales,
and I understand it is the same in the South, almost
every village has its band of players, and, what is
more, an audience eager to see, and competent to
discuss, the plays and the acting. Beyond this is grow-
ing up a movement for linking up the village players
into district companies, formed out of the best actors

54 THE RIVER OF LIFE

and actresses in each parish. Out of the district com-
panies, by a further process of selection, is to be formed
a National Band of Players, who will represent the
Welsh Drama after the manner of the Irish Players.

l2thAprill923. — The Portmadoc Players. I was lucky
enough a day or two ago to see the first performance
by a body of District Players — those of Portmadoc.
We saw three plays. The first, The Man Born to be
Hanged, was written by Mr. Richard Hughes, an able
young man of letters, poet and writer of fiction, of
whom the world is sure to hear much in the future.
He acted the chief part in his own play, and is one of
the chief inspirers of the Portmadoc movement. His
play, a tramp tragedy, has a note in it which recalled
some of the most poignant and menacing of Goya's
Caprichos. In both the note of terror is not lowered
but heightened by the abject squalor of the scene.
What Aristotle would have thought of the play is a
question well worth discussing, had I time and
energy. As it is, I can only say that the audience,
like Felix, heard and trembled. One would not have
been the least surprised at a Grand Guignol audience
being moved. That Portmadoc understood and
appreciated the play is a proof of the instinct of the
Welsh for the theatre.

The next play, The Poacher, by Mr. Francis, the
well-known Welsh dramatic writer, was charmingly
written and quite as charmingly acted. It was a
true miniature. When once you had got the scale,
it was seen to be no sketch but a finished work of art.
The lady who took the woman's part, though, of
course, an amateur, was highly accomplished, in
movement, gesture, voice, and articulation. It was
not a great part, but it is difficult to say how it could
have been better played.

THE PORTMADOC PLAYERS 55

The third play, by a local writer, Mr. Roberts,
was put into the programme at four days' notice.
For that reason it is not necessary to say anything of
the acting, except that it was brave and spirited.
The play, however, was in itself well worthy of
comment. Like The Man Born to be Hanged, it is
the work of ' a University Pen ' — to use the
Elizabethan phrase. Mr. Roberts, like Mr. Richard
Hughes, is an Oxford man, as well as a Welshman.
His drama in little is practically a duologue between
the spirit of evil c heard off ' and an old Welsh
woman, poor and unhappy, and tortured by the
memories of old fallings away from virtue. The
Devil, like his counterpart in Arthur Hugh Clough's
Dipsychus, taunts her with her sins and sorrows.
Now the essential spirit of malice, now the worst
side of her old self revived, now remorse, now terror,
stretch her on the rack. With poignant realism
Satan laughs down her excuses, chuckles over her
self-deceits, and mocks at her pathetically futile
subterfuges. He has not the nobility and fine air
of the tempter in Job, but he has the authentic voice
of Hell.

I do not know whether Mr. Roberts has read
Renan's Preface to his Drames Philosophiques, but I
am sure that, if the greatest of all Celtic men of letters
could have been called to the Town Hall at Portmadoc,
he would have been enchanted to find a brother in
race illustrating so aptly his view that certain
philosophical ideas can be best, nay, can only be
expressed by means of the drama.

56 THE RIVER OF LIFE

SHAKESPEARE

(born 23rd April 1564 ; died 23rd april 1616)

23rd April 1923. — I want to say two things about
Shakespeare. The first is that he ought to be
criticized exactly as every other poet is criticized.
The next is that such criticism, however severe, is
bound to raise and not to depress him.

The most serious and poignant indictment of
Shakespeare ever made is not that by Voltaire or any
other member of the Latin races, but that by Dr.
Johnson. Johnson was, of course, from many points
of view, one of his most ardent admirers. In regard,
however, to what he considered to be Shakespeare's
faults he wrote with merciless vigour. There is a
passage in the Preface to Johnson's edition of the
Plays which, for its masterly invective, is without
parallel in our literature. Here are the words of the
great Censor :

1 The admirers of this great poet have never less
reason to indulge their hopes of supreme excellence
than when he seems fully resolved to sink them in
dejection, and mollify them with tender emotions by
the fall of greatness, the danger of innocence, and the
crosses of love. He is not long soft and pathetick
without some idle conceit or contemptible equivoca-
tion. He no sooner begins to move, than he counter-
acts himself ; and terrour and pity, as they are rising
in the mind, are checked and blasted by sudden
frigidity. A quibble is to Shakespeare what luminous
vapours are to the traveller ; he follows it at all
adventures ; it is sure to lead him out of his way, and
sure to engulf him in the mire. It has some malignant
power over his mind, and its fascinations are irre-
sistible. Whatever be the dignity or profundity of
his disquisition, whether he be enlarging knowledge
or exalting affection, whether he be amusing attention
with incidents, or enchanting it in suspense, let but a

SHAKESPEARE 57

quibble spring up before him, and he leaves his work
unfinished. A quibble is the golden apple for which
he will always turn aside from his career, or stoop from
his elevation. A quibble, poor and barren as it is,
gave him such delight, that he was content to purchase
it by the sacrifice of reason, propriety and truth. A
quibble was to him the fatal Cleopatra for which he
lost the world, and was content to lose it.'

Now I am prepared, much as I delight in the
glorious vigour of this challenge to the Sovereign Lord
of verse, to say not merely that the accusation fails,
but that the alleged fault is one of Shakespeare's
greatest virtues. What Johnson calls quibbles,
conceits, and equivocations are, in fact, the special
artifice used by Shakespeare to give his wisdom to
the world. By them he made his poetry and himself
immortal. Shakespeare deliberately uses these ap-
parent irrelevances and inappropriatenesses in order
to interpret the spiritual in terms of the material.
He knew the danger of being a gnomic Poet, and of
dealing with abstractions instead of realities. These
are cold things, and cannot by themselves illuminate
and stimulate the mind of the ordinary man. Spirits
are not finely touched but to fine issues. You must
vitalize your metaphysical or your mystic saying or
contention if it is to strike home. Shakespeare made
his soaring thoughts and ' deep-brained sonnets '
creative and so effective by t exhibiting ' them — he
is the physician of the soul — at the very moment
when he is stirring us to the depths of our being by
some great piece of emotion in action.

This is, I believe, the explanation of the curious fact
that any one who is an eager reader of Shakespeare
is apt to be overwhelmed by suddenly coming upon
some line or phrase of tremendous force which is let
loose, as it were, from the text. It may seem at first

58 THE RIVER OF LIFE

sight to have little or nothing to do with the scene,
and yet we feel, if we are in the mood to receive a
strong impression, that we have added something of
great price to the treasury of the mind — something
which is in the nature of a revelation. We reel at the
impact of the thought, and for a moment are able,
as no doubt the poet meant we should be, to under-
stand and grasp things secret, elusive, and impalpable.
He conveys to us something which he could have
8 got across ' to us in no other way. This was no
doubt what Renan meant when he said that the
philosophy of the future would only be able to be
expressed by means of the Drama.

I can best illustrate what I mean by one or two
examples of the soul- shaking discoveries to which
Shakespeare subjects the mind, as it were, for their
own sake, and not for the sake of helping on the
development of the poem in which the passages appear.
Though the plays afford the best examples of what I
mean, the first that occurs to me is a line in one of the
Sonnets in the middle of the great symphony. Every
one remembers the noble Sonnet which begins :

* When in the chronicle of wasted time '

and goes on to speak of :

6 . . . beauty making beautiful old rhyme
In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights } ;

We turn from this wonderful display of sublimated
emotionalism to what are perhaps the two most
astonishing lines in all Shakespeare :

* Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul

Of the wide world dreaming on things to come.'

By these words the universe is affected. We are
wafted by them into a perfectly different plane of
consciousness. A window is suddenly thrown open

SHAKESPEARE 59

on to the most mystic, and yet in a sense the most
real, of all the cosmic immensities and profundities.
We shiver on the brink of Eternity. It is but for an
instant, but in that instant we have seen something
that could only have been made ours and mortal by
Shakespeare's invocation. But this conversion is
purely incidental. The Sonnet, as a whole, is by no
means one of the poet's greatest poems, though it
does contain another wonderful and cryptic line :

1 And the sad augurs mock their own presage.'

Here the window opens on a darkness that is full of
dreadful shapes and fancies.

Another phrase of almost unendurable intensity is
to be found in Cymbeline. It is a nosegay of
Mandragora which Shakespeare plucks for us, as it
were, at the very foot of the gallows. As the execu-
tioner and the criminal exchange their grim pleas-
antries, there suddenly springs out upon us from the
reeling page :

* Your Death has eyes in 's head then.
I have not seen him so pictured.'

Take next the passage in Coriolanus, where the
serving-men at the banquet of the Volscians discuss
the problem of peace and condemn it :

* First Serving- Man. It makes men hate one another.
' Third Serving-Man. Reason ; because they then less need
one another.'

What a dreadful and desperate piece of universal
prescience ! Here is a window through which we dare
not look. Shakespeare did not always open these
windows upon the metaphysical sea. He quite as
often surprises and alarms our minds by some point
of practical politics, as, for example, when we burst

60 THE RIVER OF LIFE

in with the irrelevant apophthegm in Timon of
Athens :

* For crimes, like lands, are not inherited.'

There goes down into the dust all the rhetoric and
sophistry which try to make one generation of men
severally and collectively responsible for deeds done
by a perfectly different set of people in times long
spent. Take again the heroic irrelevance of the
comments made by Lafeu in All 's Well that Ends
Well:

6 They say, miracles are past ; and we have our
philosophical persons, to make modern and familiar
things supernatural and causeless. Hence is it that
we make trifles of terrors ; ensconcing ourselves into
seeming knowledge, when we should submit ourselves
to an unknown fear.'

Was there ever such a turning of intellectual tables ?
It is usually the anti- materialists who are accused of
attaching superstition to modern and familiar things.
Here we see the other side of the picture. Now, the
things upon which Ratiocination has to break its
teeth are the c things supernatural and causeless,5 the
things about which a man must say Agnosco if he is
to be honest. You cannot make the great mysteries
of existence modern and familiar by a change of name.
Terrors are not made trifles by digging ourselves in —
that is the meaning of ' ensconcing.' The trench
of sham knowledge will not help us to face the un-
known thing, even though it is fearful. And all this
in a passage which at first sight looks like mere
frivolous dullness.

Any one who looks may find his mind attacked by
a hundred of these ambushes as he reads Shakespeare.
As a lier-in-wait Shakespeare has no rival. The
plays of the last period are the most prolific of

SHAKESPEARE 61

ambushes. For example, Troilus and Cressida,
Coriolanus, and Timon of Athens. But even in the
purely humorous passages we may find Shakespeare
shocking Dr. Johnson by saying more than he means,
or rather, more than he has any strict right to mean.
Witness the wonderful passage on the Social Order,
which, remember, is put into the mouth, not of
Falstaff, but of Gadshill. Gadshill is assuring the
Chamberlain of the inn that he has got plenty of
c protection ' and will not be used too hard, even if
taken in an act of brigandage :

c I am joined with no foot land-rakers, no long-
staff, sixpenny strikers, none of these mad, mustachio
purple-hued maltworms ; but with nobility and
tranquillity, burgomasters and great oneyers ; such
as can hold in, such as will strike sooner than speak,
and speak sooner than drink, and drink sooner than
pray ; and yet, 'zounds, I lie ; for they pray con-
tinually to their saint, the commonwealth ; or rather,
not pray to her, but prey on her, for they ride up and
down on her and make her their boots.'

I could quote dozens of other irrelevant revelations,
but I will only loose one more winged line, and shall
not say where it is to be found, in order that my
readers may enjoy the pleasure of hunting it down :

* A dark house and a detested wife.'

It is not very relevant, I am afraid, to the scene from
which it leaps upon us like a panther, but since it
rang in Shakespeare's ears it would have been a
capital offence to have deprived us of it. How
pompous and bombastic sounds all the rumbling talk
about the Theban Terror and the House of Atreus
and the rest beside the bleak, unfathomable miseries
of this awful line ! Even in Phedre there is nothing to
come near it.

62 THE RIVER OF LIFE

Perhaps my readers will say that I have given
myself and my contention away by putting forth my
proofs ; but I am not afraid. I will not avoid Dr.
Johnson's lance when he declares that c quibbles '
like these were ' the fatal Cleopatra for which he lost
the world, and was content to lose it.' My answer
is that which Byron used of this same Queen of
Egypt. It was Byron's opinion that

■ Actium lost for Cleopatra's eyes,
Out-balances all Caesar's victories.'

RELIGION AND RITUAL

1st May 1923. — Most anti-religious critics of
religion use the word ' religion ' in a wholly different
sense from that in which it is used, or rather ought
to be used, by the followers of Christ. They use it,
that is, in its original rather than in its derived
sense. The word as the Romans used it meant
primarily ritual, ceremony, and observance. The
Etruscans, for example, were described as a specially
' religious ' people because they were specially
meticulous in keeping up all the rules and traditions
by which the gods were entreated, humoured, and
placated. They were experts in a particular art.
That Christianity in the past and in the present
has accreted to itself a great deal of religion in this
sense cannot be denied. In spite of the fact that our
Lord's greatest teachings were so openly and so
clearly directed against the most concentrated
ritualists of His, or, perhaps, of any age — the
Pharisees — the instinctive desire for ritual, which so
pathetically pervades men's minds, has laid its
corrupting hands on Christianity. With Christianity
of this ritualistic kind such speculations as those to
be found in the ordinary handbooks on Comparative

RELIGION AND RITUAL 63

Religion may be concerned. Their conclusions may
touch, and, as they touch, may shiver, the religion
of ritual and of forms and ceremonies.

The religion of Christ they cannot affect or move
by one hair's-breadth. That stands, and will always
stand, quite outside their scope and influence. Christ
was the first and the greatest of anti- Ritualists. The
notion that God was to be worshipped not in the
spirit but by rule, not from within but by external
devices, was to Him utterly abhorrent. Those who
thought that religion was ceremonial were to Him the
supreme blasphemers.

The religion of Christ is a state of being. It is a
vision, not a series of observances ; a mood of power,
not a creed ; a quickening of the spirit, not a dogma
or a doctrine. It is the way, the truth, and the life —
a revelation, an inspiration, an opening of a window
in the soul, a new sense, a road to a new heaven and a
new earth. The Kingdom of God is within us. It is
a light that lightens us from inside, not from outside.
We gain this constant influence, this peculiar grace,
not from the practice of special rites, but from contact
with the Spirit of Christ, by letting His words sink
into our hearts. The pearl of great price is ours,
and will remain ours no matter what new secrets are
wrung from Nature's reserves, no matter what the
discoveries of the experts in the science of comparative
religion, of the physicists, the astronomers, and the
biologists. These are all worthy in themselves, all
of good report, and it is utterly childish to regard
them as ever at enmity with the Faith of Christ.
They are not that. They do not move on the same
plane. The pure in heart, the true sons of God,
stand as before. No word of science can uncreate
the Kingdom of Heaven.

How well did he realize this who wrote that,

64 THE RIVER OF LIFE

though all the superficial and trappings of religion
and of doctrine should pass away, love, the essence
of the religion of Christ, should remain, and should be
enough. It is because the religion of Christ is a state
of being, and a state of being that allows communion
with God on the one hand and gives the fruits of good
life on the other, that there is nothing that can prevail
against it, and that it need fear nothing from any
increase of human wisdom.

It is impossible that any new learning can ever
injure it. The religion of Christ is a life to be lived,
not a form to be practised. // religion were merely
ritual, it would be the most irreligious thing in the
world. It has not, and cannot have, any enmity to
knowledge. Rather it must, as knowledge widens
and deepens and the scope of human faculty becomes
greater, grow in power. The clearer and better the
lantern, the brighter shines the light within.

No doubt, in writing as I have written, I shall be
arraigned by some people as greatly wanting in
reverence, by others as greatly wanting in insight,
and by yet another school as greatly wanting in
learning. The last-named will say that what I have
said is not only useless, but very old, as well as very
heretical. I shall be accused, that is, of verging on
the Quaker doctrine of the inner light, if not indeed
on a full-fledged antinomianism.

8 Such an attitude and such speculations,' I can
imagine a convinced Roman Catholic or a High
Churchman declaring, ' sound very well when put
forth in the abstract, but in practice we know how
such things end. They end in a loose lawlessness of
thought and deed, which becomes the very negation
of Christianity. It was to protect men from the
consequences of regarding religion as merely a state
of being, and as an inner light, that the Church was

RELIGION AND RITUAL 65

founded, and had in her turn to found her system of
forms and ceremonies, rules and regulations, rituals
and symbolisms.'

I do not agree, but after all that is not the question.
Whether I am using dangerous language or not, the
fact remains that the essential spirit of Christ's teach-
ing is not touched by investigations into the science
of comparative religion or by the disinterment of the
origins of religious belief or of philosophy. The
spirit in communion with God receives no hurt.
That for certain minds — perhaps for the majority
of minds — such communion may be induced by
Christian observances and by an appeal through
ritual to the emotions, I do not deny. Men who are
devotees of ritual can and do hold fast the true, the
essential religion of Christ. The fact that they
exclude from their conception of the Church those
who are indifferent to ritual must not blind one to
their possession of the pearl of price.

But, once more, observances are non-essential,
even if we allow them to be matters of spiritual
convenience. Above and beyond, and withdrawn
in the eternal ecstasy, and yet near and open to all
mankind, dwells the divine Spirit of Christ. In that
Spirit all men may share, and by it in the truest and
highest sense all the world shall be saved.

Time may be shown to be a figment of man's brain.
Space may be a discardable convention ; and infinity
but a return to the place from which you started ;
but the religion of Christ, the indwelling faith, will
remain unmoved. But these are things for larger
comment. Past, present, and future demand at the
least the courtesy of a full entry. For them another
day and a long one.

66 THE RIVER OF LIFE

THE PAST, THE PRESENT, AND THE FUTURE

3rd May 1923. — I promised in the entry of the
day before yesterday to deal with the Past, the
Present, and the Future. I fulfil my promise in the
form of a poem, for something stronger than me
appeared to command that form of presentment.
Also I found that you cannot treat of these three
things without treating also of Fate and Free-will
and the Omniscience and the Omnipotence of God.
Here is the poem :

THE PRESENT, THE FUTURE, AND THE PAST

The Present is not here. It passed away
Before you spoke — So perishes 4 To-day.'
The Future is the Past grown thin and wan,
— Sudden it leaps upon us and is gone.
Rolling beneath our feet it turns once more,
And is that living Past it was before.
So in perpetual change we melt away,
Only to be renewed another day.

The nature of the Future now is seen,
As but a consequence of what has been,
Not a new play ; — only a change of scene.
The Past 's the end, the all, the one, the whole,
The Flux within it is its life, its soul.

The Past alone is firm, alone is sure,

You know it is, though you should know no more.

It cannot alter and it cannot die,

It does not mock you, and it does not lie.

Not God Himself, not chance, not change, not Fate

Can blot it out, post-date, or ante-date.

It is our Rock of Ages — ' We have been,

Have laughed, have wept, have felt, have heard, have seen.''

THE PRESENT, FUTURE, AND PAST 67

The children of the Past, ourselves we see

Shut in the boundless Pale of Destiny.

The Past directs. Each thought, each word, each act

Is but the product of some fertile pact

Made long ago. Set in its terms there lay

Sequestered our to-morrow and to-day.

Then, blind Automata, we stumble by,
Will-less and powerless, 'neath a darkening sky ?
So it may seem ; but why need it be so ?
Though man's conditions are prescribed, and flow
In rigid channels, he is free in soul,
Free now in part, free later in the whole.

In all our calculations, balance sheets,

And audits strict, end with end never meets.

Some undetected loss, or profit, foils

The well-kept ledger, and the Accountant's toils.

The analytic Chemist can assign

In every hundred a clear ninety-nine.

The unknown Vitamine eludes his pains,

Though 'tis that Vitamine which lives and reigns !

In our account with Heaven and the Past

There stands an Item which is never ' Cast.'

Yet it is there. 'Tis that by which we see

The turning spheres of endless Destiny,

Are conscious of ourselves and of our Fate,

And know that Freedom comes or soon or late.

Man's body and man's brain, man's senses fine,

That to report on all they find combine,

Make not the Man. Note now that subtle Lute.

The instrument lies lifeless, cold, and mute

Without a player. Yet, when he comes, its strings

Break into music, are creative things.

While he is there the music to prolong,

He rules the Soundboard and commands the Song.

True, when the Lute is broken and deranged,
He cannot play, for all is spoilt and changed.

68 THE RIVER OF LIFE

But though the melody is dead — or drowned
In muffled groanings, or in senseless sound,
We do not swear the player must be dead,
— To make new harmonies elsewhere he 's fled.

This Parable of sound man's case will suit ;

We are the Lute-Player, but not the Lute.

Those who so long ago its frame and strings

Minutely fashioned, used material things.

The Spirit waited ; but where and how and why,

We do not know, to boast himself an 'I,'

And wake the strings. But can we call that strange,

When all our knowledge has so short a range,

And is so faint, so doubtful, so obscure,

That even of our best we are not sure ?

All that we know is that we live and think,
Are conscious, are ourselves, and on the brink
Of Vastness stand, and that there is no end
And no beginning, and that all things tend
To movement and to Oneness, and that Space
And Time are milestones on a goalless race.

But, above all, we know we are not stone,
Or iron, or flesh, or blood. The mind alone
Is the reality. The rest 's a show,
Shadows and seemings, ' Properties ' that glow
With heatless fires, mere settings of the scene.
We are the actors, who tell what they mean.

Let us then wait, and, waiting, be content
Till to the Presence Chamber we be sent,
And learn the causes and the full intent
Of our commission. Soon, or long delayed,
Of one thing ne'er shall be our souls afraid.
We shall not by our waiting change in kind.
Man is a spirit that no chains can bind.
He moves in darkness, but he is not blind.

THE PRESENT, FUTURE, AND PAST 69

Arraign my scheme of Present, Future, Past,

Call me a Fatalist, and strive to blast

My theory as a Heresy or Schism,

4 The worn-out clothing of Materialism.'

Can I reply ? Yes, be assured I can,

And shall convince you 'tis not God, but man

That I dethrone, and that my old new plan

Is but a transcript of the stern behest

That God sees all, knows all, and is possessed

Of all that was, and is, and is to be.

'Tis only God we can define as Free.

For Him the last trump has already blown.

His consciousness is all, and He alone

Unchanged and motionless : — His state and station

A central calm amidst an endless agitation.

But can that be ? Yes, be it must if God

Is God, and not a super-man, whose nod

Can be engaged by Prayer or Ritual skill

Which binds the Godhead through the human will.

Both Man and God cannot at once be free.

As well rank Greatness with Infinity.

But our conditions ? Those, no doubt, depend
On consequence and circumstance, and send
Forth endless convolutions. But who dare
Say we are Nothing speeding to Nowhere,
The raving Helots of a blank despair ?

But though we cannot stir or change a will

Which runs on adamantine rails, yet man has still

His consciousness, and, though so close confined,

He some day on his prison floor will find

An order for release. Its nature who can guess ?

Absorption or Survival ? No or Yes ?

Change or no change ? Let each for each descry

The whirling circle. I predict that I,

Since I am conscious, cannot wholly die.

70 THE RIVER OF LIFE

What is material must its laws obey,
Must ebb and flow, bud, germinate, decay.
The soul is that which does not pass away.

Therefore let men when eager in debate
They canvass God and Truth, Free-will and Fate,
And strive the Past and Future to relate,
Remember this : — We are not dead, though bound,
And in our ' Fated Happenings ' God is found.

THE PROBLEM OF INSPIRATION

Mh May 1923. — The poem which precedes this
entry, or, at any rate, the first draft of the greater part
of it, came to me almost as if dictated by some one or
something outside me. I had made no sort of decision
to write a poem on that or any other subject. What
is more, I had not the problems involved at the
moment especially in my head — though, no doubt,
I had some weeks before had a long discussion on
the matter. I am, however, convinced that I did not
say to myself, as I might well have done, ' This would
make an admirable subject of a poem in the style of
Dryden.' All I know is that I woke with the first
couplets half formed in my head, got up, and directly
after breakfast sat down and with what for me was
singular ease put pen to paper. Making due allowance
for my verses not being of any great importance and
for the fact that I am not a poet, I should say that I
was experiencing on a very small scale what the poets
call an inspiration, and I an external suggestion —
the state to which Milton alludes when he speaks of :

' . . . My Celestial Votaress, who deigns
Her nightly visitations unimplored.'

Whether this manifestation of mental activity,
apparently unvolitioned, is really entitled to this

THE PROBLEM OF INSPIRATION 71

explanation, or what inspiration is, and how it fits
in with the problem of the Unconscious and Conscious
Selves and the Memory, is a curious matter and well
worth discussion.

Do we receive external inspirations, admonitions,
and revelations, or are all the mental phenomena
which we group under these names really ' made in
the House ' ? Or, again, are some home-made, and
do some come from outside ? There is a good deal to
be said for the made-in-the-house view. It is based
on the general theory of the Subconsciousness — a
theory which in the main I feel we must accept if
we are to be ruled by Truth and Reason, and not by
Prejudice. The Subconsciousness may be said to
preside over a vast Register of all the sense-impressions
which we have received since our senses were capable
of reporting anything, and possibly also a certain
number of pre-natal hereditary impressions with
which it was endowed at the moment of conception.
Every emanation of the body may possibly carry with
it certain impressions, and those hereditary im-
pressions may be capable of expansion as is a
desiccated Japanese imitation flower as soon as it is
put into water. In any case, the Subconscious Self
possesses a complete register of past impressions.
All are entered there. To this register a card-index
of a very imperfect and incomplete kind has been
made, or, at any rate, provided for, by the Conscious
Self. This index, called Memory, is constantly con-
sulted by the Conscious Self. It is also handled by
the Subconscious with great accuracy and resource
whenever the Conscious Self can manage to make the
Subconscious understand that he is wanted to produce
a particular entry which the Conscious Self cannot
discover for himself. But this is not all. Without
instruction or suggestion, in day-dreams, night-

72 THE RIVER OF LIFE

dreams, brown-studies, mind-wanderings, and, most
of all, in kmacies and deliriums, the Subconscious,
who apparently is fond of vague rummagings in the
vast files of Sense-Records, pushes up all sorts of
selections from the Memory into the Conscious Mind.
' Just look at this. It might help you in your re-
flections on Spontaneous Generation or Incommen-
surables. This is a queer thing, isn't it ? How does
this fit in with Predestination ? Isn't this for-
gotten entry rather apposite to your line of thought on
survival and on the fact of death, and death generally,
and, still more, on the Fourth Dimension ? ' This
sort of thing is going on perpetually. Usually the
Conscious Mind says 8 Get away ! ' and bangs the door.
Sometimes, however, the Conscious Mind, when
tired, or vacant as in sleep or day-dreams, does not
push the intruders back as disturbing his practical'
reflections, but allows them in, and often with very
useful and happy results. And then we talk of in-
spiration and revelation ! On the other hand, when
the results are unintelligible, or foolish, or irritating,
or injurious, we call them c madness,' c insanity,'
6 possession.' According to this view, Inspiration is
merely a resort to the Files by the Subconsciousness
with results that surprise and astonish the Conscious
Self.

To put it in another way. The Subconscious does
not merely report to the Conscious the news brought
in by the Senses, but also reports its own researches
in the Files — researches which are specially active
during sleep, i.e. when the Senses are not bringing
in new copy.

That is a good theory, and probably a true theory
as far as it goes, and obviously one which pleases the
Materialist and the Automatist. I doubt, however,
very much whether it is the whole story. In the

THE PROBLEM OF INSPIRATION 78

first place, I believe that the Conscious Self obtains
food for reflection not merely out of the Memory
Files, but from a private file of his own over which
the Subconscious has no control. This is the File of
Abstract Conceptions and Ideas — the File in which
the elemental thoughts about which the Senses are
unable to bring reports are chronicled. Here are
stored conceptions such as those of Ultimate Death
and Ultimate Life, of the Finite and the Infinite, of
the Continuum, of Relativity, of Movement, of Change,
of Variation, of Proportion, of Dimensions, of Vibra-
tion, of Greatness and Smallness, of being, and becom-
ing, and ceasing to be. Here, too, are stored the
ideas of Volition, Truth, Good and Evil, Whence and
Whither, Spirit and Mind, Purity in its ultimate and
fullest sense, Love, Allness and Oneness ; and God.
I write without attempt at completeness in my
catalogue or at any scientific analysis or sequence,
but merely illustratively to my main thought.

Note incidentally that all the conceptions are
subject to the measuring rod of Reason — a function
which has nothing to do with Sense Reports, in its
origin, though, no doubt, it measures them as it
measures everything else conceivable by the human
intelligence — everything, that is, which is measurable.
And what is not ?

The verses themselves, whether externally sug-
gested or subconsciously created, do not, I think,
require amplification, or comment, or explanation,
except on two points. The first is concerned with
the Present. It is obvious that the Present, if it is
c a state of being,' is one so transient, so quick in
movement, that you cannot catch it or hold it. It
is gone before it is realized. Indeed, it may be said
that you do not enjoy the Present till it has become
a memory — a very recent memory, but still a memory.

74 THE RIVER OF LIFE

I say I am enjoying writing this section of my Diary.
But that is only in a way of speaking. What I am
enjoying is the immediate and only just recorded
memory of the thoughts which moved me at the
moment of their conception.

It is the same with action and emotion. What
we enjoy or deplore is the very recent memory. But
memory is essentially a record of the Past, and so
part of the Past. Therefore the Present is not real-
ized by us, and so for us is non-existent till it is
the Past. Therefore it is accurate to say that the
Past embraces and contains the Present as well as
the Future.

That the Past is preparing, propagating, and pro-
ducing the Future in its womb is too clear to need
much amplification. Every act has its consequences.
They are inevitable, irrevocable, as far as they go, and
cannot be eliminated, though, of course, they meet
and are interwoven with the consequences of millions
of other acts. I am here to-day in consequence of
billions upon billions of acts and events and happen-
ings which are behind me, just as the Sun is shining
and the Planets keeping their courses and the whole
Stellar System is moving somewhere, because of
happenings behind them. ' Behind ' is not a good
word because it seems to assume the existence of
those lately exposed impostors, Time and Space,
but it must serve, as the word is as yet wanting to
express precedence or apparent precedence — there is
no precedence on the circumference of a circle — in
the Continuum. At any and every given moment a
man, or a star, or a piece of matter (and possibly
piece of spirit) has got the endless, beginningless
Universe c back of him and them,' as they say in
America. If 50,000 years ago a Neolithic man had
on a certain morning turned left instead of right as he

THE PROBLEM OF INSPIRATION 75

left his cave, I should not have been here to-day.
That is true. It is equally true that he could not have
turned left instead of right, because he was, as it
were, bred and produced and woven in the weaving-
sheds of the Past, to turn left instead of right ! Some
predestination there 1

The other point is less obvious, but perhaps as
important. I talk, as people always do, as if the
Future were passing into the Present and the Present
into the Past, and therefore as if the Present were
in a state of movement. But, as Mr. Bertram
Russell has shown us, ' a state of movement ' is an
inconceivable, incomprehensible idea. If it existed,
you could be in two places at once, no matter how
short a time you stopped in either. It is not move-
ment, but change that marks the alteration from
Future to Past. But change is the antithesis of
movement. It has a kick in it. You were one
thing ; lo and behold, you have become another !
It is a magic-like operation, not a rapid growth.
The spell is cast, and, before you know what has
happened, you are a camel or an elephant instead of a
man, or you find yourself in Russia, or China, or
Michigan, when you thought you were in Whitehall.
There was no intervening process — no fast or slow
gradations of growth or decay.

It is by change, not movement, that the Future
becomes the Past. There is a jolt, not a slide, and the
thing is done. Compare the difference between an
ordinary progressive clock which moves on and an
electric clock which goes in jerks. What are the
consequences of adopting this conception I do not
profess to be able to work out, but of its truth I feel
conscious.

76 THE RIVER OF LIFE

SECRECY

5th May 1923. — Just now c the world thinks,'
and, in a sense, ' I think so too,' that Secrecy is the
worst of ills. But, if that is the case, ought we not to
abolish it and live in glass-houses with all the doors
open and all the cards on the table ?

Yes, Secrecy is a great, perhaps the greatest, of all
the sources of depravity. If you could effectively
bind human beings never to use Secrecy, you would
have conferred an untold benefit on Society. You
would have stopped treason domestic, thieving, and
corruption at their very source.

But, alas ! you can't. Men will not be so con-
trolled, either in their own minds or in a limited
co-operation. ' I '11 share my knowledge with you
if you '11 promise not to tell any one else.' Till you
can stop that whispered aside, you will have to put up
with Secrecy. Besides, Secrecy is often as great an
instrument for good as for evil. It is a poison, but
poisons in controlled doses may be as necessary for the
body politic as arsenic is sometimes for the body
natural.

Still, Secrecy is the dreadful denier of hearts. It
devitalizes that potent antiseptic, shame. Remember
how Secrecy works at home and proves a keener
Pandar than Galeotto or the tale of Launcelot.
1 What would people say if I were to do what you ask ?
— Oh, it is utterly impossible. I could not face the
shame of it.' — ' But they will never know, unless you
tell them. How could they ? '■ — ' Are you quite
sure ? ' — 4 As sure as that I live ! ' — * Very well, then,
at twelve, at the south end of the terrace ; and oh !
don't, don't betray me.'

SECRECY 77

Secrecy is capable of playing in the great world of
business and affairs almost as vile a part.

* If you take £10,000 worth of these shares practically
at par, you will be able to sell them in a week for
£15,000. It is nothing but throwing away money
not to buy them.' — ' But in my position, how can I ?
I admit this Company has nothing to do with my
office, and that, even if it had, my holding a few of
its shares for a week would not alter its policy or help
it in the very least. Still I . . .' ' But who 's
going to know ? You haven't got to shout it out in
the streets, have you ? You need not even buy in
your own name. Hundreds of people do all their
buying in other people's names.' ' But it might
come out.' ' Impossible. Did you ever hear of my
buying shares in some one else's name ? But I do it
constantly.' ' Do you really ? Oh, very well then,
perhaps I will, if you are sure it will never come out.
But, I say, why not £20,000 while we are about it ? '
1 All right. I will tell my Brokers : in what name
shall I put them ? '

Yet look at the other side. How often a good
cause gets secret help from people whose hearts are
touched, but who dare not come into the open.
Secrecy helped hundreds of American slaves to escape.
Secrecy has saved its thousands in Russia.

In fine, Secrecy is a neutral thing, an instrument
both for good and evil, and it will never be got rid of
till some plan is devised for preventing men having
confidences with their own minds and their own
consciences. The wheels of the world could not go
round if Secrecy were abolished.

78 THE RIVER OF LIFE

LOGIC

6th May 1923. — ' Natural parts and good judgments
rule the world. States are not governed by Ergotisms.
Many have ruled well, who could not, perhaps, define
a commonwealth ; and they who understand not the
globe of the earth, command a great part of it.' I
agree with Sir Thomas Browne. And, quaintly
enough, it is Ergotism — i.e. Logic — that makes me
agree. In public affairs your premises are almost
always doubtful. You have to guess them, and you
often guess wrong. But if you argue closely — i.e.
ergotistically — from false premises, you are certain
to get a wrong conclusion. If you do not try to be
logical and to obey ergotism, you may very possibly
get instinctively to a right conclusion.

THE NATURE OF THE CELT

7th May 1923. — In the last resort the problem of
the Irish race is based upon a fundamental mis-
apprehension. The Irishman was perfectly right
who gave it as the final grievance of the Irishman
against the Anglo-Saxon, ' And then you won't even
believe that we don't speak the truth ! ' In the same
way, one might, if one were in the habit of making
epigrammatic charges, charge the Irish people with
the fact that they will not even believe that we are
sentimental liars, and by our sentimental talk have
again and again led the Irish to think that we are
going to be far more idiotically generous and senti-
mentally absurd than we have any real intention of
being.

Till we know how to manage the donkey — the

THE ENGLISHMAN'S NATURE 79

cleverest of animals, remember — we shall never under-
stand the Irish problem.

6 The thing most necessary in the driving and
managing of donkeys is a mixture of cruelty and
intrigue, diplomacy and brutality. That is why the
Celtic races like driving donkeys and do it so success-
fully.' So spake a cynical politician. Incidentally,
his words provide an answer to the question why
the English hate driving donkeys. Tell your coach-
man to get a donkey when the odd- job pony dies, and
mark his face !

THE ENGLISHMAN'S NATURE

Sth May 1923. — I wrote yesterday of the Irishman.
To-day it must be the Englishman.

The Englishman has been called domineering. He
is not so in reality, but he is always finding himself in
circumstances where action is necessary, where some-
thing has got to be done, and where he is the only
person who appears able to do it. The French lost
India because they forced Brahmin soldiers to dig
trenches. They argued logically enough — a soldier
must obey orders whatever they are. We gained
India because we scratched our heads and said :
4 Well, here 's a pretty state of things. Still, soldier
or no soldier, if a man says his caste will be broken
by digging earth, it wouldn't be fair to make him do
it, especially if, when you try, he will lie down and
die. Military obedience is all right, and of course
absolutely necessary, but, pushed as far as that, it is
not business. We had better try and work it some
other way.'

Did not Mirabeau's father, ' the friend of man,' say
of us : ' These miserable islanders do not know, and
will probably not know till their whole wretched

80 THE RIVER OF LIFE

system has exploded, whether they are living under a
Monarchy or a Republic, a Democracy or an
Oligarchy ? ■ His logical conclusion that we must
inevitably be ruined by our muddle-headedness and
impotence in analysis sounds well enough, but was in
fact a hopeless blunder.

MORE ABOUT SECRECY

9th May 1923. — A friend of mine with whom I
talked over the question of Secrecy has sent me the
following comment on Secrecy and its place in the
body-politic :

6 All things written on Secrecy demand a postscript
or caveat We grow zealously angry about the secrets
that come out and cause a scandal, but public opinion
has necessarily nothing to say about the secrets that
are kept, and they are often the most soul-shaking
and world-shaking secrets of all. By the nature of
the case, neither I nor any other man can write down
the unknown in plain terms, but accident enables
one occasionally to lift a corner of the veil of even the
inner shrine. People in general probably do not
know that there is, or perhaps I should say there
used to be, an inner and secret function of the Con-
stitution, or at any rate of the Administration, which
was never even faintly alluded to in books or news-
papers or common talk, and yet was of great im-
portance, and perhaps is at this very moment. At
any rate it used to be whispered that a Prime Minister,
when he went out of office, handed to his successor
half a sheet of notepaper with a few names upon it,
perhaps only three or four. They were the names
of prominent men who ought not to be given any of
the great posts in the gift of the Prime Minister
because they were men of specially bad character,
or men who had committed some fault which, though
in the public interest it was thought better not to

MORE ABOUT SECRECY 81

expose and punish, showed them to be unworthy
of trust ; men, in fact, against whom the word
Turpissimus must be written in the final register of
the State. These were the men upon whom some
dire suspicion, though perhaps barren of legal proof,
had fallen ; men who had committed some supremely
disgraceful act, who had lied in their own interests
and against the interests of their native land, who
had betrayed their colleagues to some Foreign Power,
who, in order to levy or to resist blackmail, had im-
perilled the public welfare ; men who had consciously
or unconsciously taken a bribe ; men who must be
regarded as " bad men," however low the stan-
dard applied, and however lenient the judges. Yet,
though deeply tainted, such men often contrive to
escape exposure, and, for all the world knows, are
of the highest character. Hence the names on the
secret list.

' The highest authorities in the Church were said to
have such another small and very secret list which
would prevent certain men getting to the Episcopal
Bench who would defile it, though these men could
not be broken without too great a public scandal.
This list has accounted before now, say the cynics
below their breaths, for an unexpected Nolo epis-
copari. A similar list, passed from one Lord Chancellor
to another, or lodged with the Sovereign, was felt to
be the true explanation why some great legal luminary
never reached the Bench.'

Any one can make good points against the system
under which this tiny rivulet of Secrecy flows unseen
in the Constitution. It may no doubt involve
terrible cruelty to men who have been under unjust
suspicion. It is the stab in the back, the blow in the
dark, from which no man can protect himself. He
does not know when it comes or whence it comes, and
cannot therefore give what may be a perfectly good
answer to a charge founded on a pure delusion. All

F

82 THE RIVER OF LIFE

his life he has to fight a shadow. He is always
coming up against some impalpable and inexplicable
obstacle to advancement and success. And yet, if
people would only tell him the nature of this haunting
ghost, he could lay it in an instant, and show that he
had nothing to be ashamed of, and nothing to conceal.
In spite of these obvious drawbacks, this particular
kind of Secrecy, with all its terrible risks and injustices,
will go on, and is bound to go on. ' I cannot give you
any reasons, but if you are wise you will never trust —
in any great matter.' No just man will like using
that formula, or will indeed ever use it except in an
extreme case, but you cannot prevent the man who
is eager for the good of his country, and determined
to leave nothing undone which might help her, using
it on occasion. That is why there is somewhere in
every nation and in every Government, and always
must be, some element of real and absolute Secrecy.
That Government is best and happiest which relies
least on Secrecy, but, in the world constituted as it is,
the State in which there are no secrets runs the risk
of being too good to live.

A DAY-DREAM OF THE GATES OF HELL

12th May 1923. — I have all my life been given to
day-dreams and day-dramas, or perhaps I should
call them waking dreams and dramas. I suppose
twenty-four hours never pass in which I do not have
them. In one sense, no doubt, they are part of the
universal habit which exists in all children and
persists in millions of grown-up men and women of
telling oneself stories. When I say c telling oneself,'
of course I am rather begging the question, for
perhaps it is somebody else, the unconscious and not
the conscious, that is acting as narrator. However,

A DAY-DREAM OF THE GATES OF HELL 83

I am not trying to be psychological on this occasion,
but merely want to record the facts.

Here is one of the most elaborate stories that I
ever dreamed or told myself. It was used, no doubt,
half consciously, but much more unconsciously, partly
to soothe physical pain, and still more psychical
anxiety, which I was experiencing owing to the fact
that some one dear to me was undergoing a serious
operation. Those who read the story will think it
strange perhaps that one should have quieted oneself
with such a piece of high-coloured intensive rhetoric ;
but the ways of human creatures and of the human
mind are strange beyond conjecture. I can only say
that I have again and again found that the things
which excite other people calm me, and vice versa. I
can put myself to sleep by thinking out a political
leader. A novel, however light, would keep me awake !
In the case which I am about to give I was inspired
by a passage in The Pilgrim 's Progress :

' So they told the King, but he would not come
down to see him ; but commanded the two Shining
Ones that conducted Christian and Hopeful to the
City to go out and take Ignorance and bind him hand
and foot and have him away. Then they took him
up and carried him through the air to the door that I
saw in the side of the hill and put him in there. Then
I saw that there was, a way to Hell, even from the Gates
of Heaven, as well as from the City of Destruction. So I
awoke, and behold it was a dream ! '

These words set up a long chain of thought and
ultimately led me to form an elaborate day-dream.

I stood at the Gates of Hell.

He who has seen the entrance to the Pisani Villa
at Stra can best form an impression of what I beheld.
He will remember the stupendous insolence and
grandeur of that strange enormity of architectural

84 THE RIVER OF LIFE

magnanimity. Huge pillars, wreathed not with
garlands of fruit and flowers, but with the spirals of
flying staircases, flank the vast portal — itself a huge
triumphal arch. On each side the colossal boundary
walls slope away in long perspective, pierced and
fretted with minor gates and private posterns, some
actual, some merely decorative achievements, but all
conceived on a scale of gigantic magnificence. Who
drew them I know not, but if I were told that Piranesi
in the wildest and yet most grandiose and most
terrible of his opium dreams flung those gates, pillars,
arches, walls, and columns upon the drawing-board
of a brother- architect, I should not doubt the legend.
But at Stra the cracked buff stucco resolves the
turbulence and menace of the design. In my dream
it was otherwise. There it was not stucco, or stone,
or any kindly work of mason or bricklayer, but the
dreadful product of the furnace and the fire. The
Gates of Hell and the colonnaded boundary wall that
shut in that soul- shaking enceinte were all of shining
yellow brass and towered far above their earthly
prototype, if prototype it were.

On the outline waved and flickered a pale-blue
sulphurous flame. Its light tongues licked the tops
of the columns, the convolutions of the stairs, the
endless levels of the architrave, and the bases of the
columns. It was as if some cunning artist in illumina-
tion had picked out all the salient points with his
quivering lamps. But all that was nothing to what I
must call, for want of better and juster words, the
aerial background of the Gates. As I looked I knew
what Virgil and Milton meant when they wrote of
gates, though gates so different : With dreadful
faces thronged and fiery arms. Through the bars of
the Gates, all along the top of the walls, at all the
minor openings I saw, and felt where I could not see,

A DAY-DREAM OF THE GATES OF HELL 85

these awful faces — a suffusion of white, wan visages,
fierce, threatening, ominous. They were everywhere
watching me with their wicked eyes, and yet I could
never hold or catch their glance. They looked over
me, under me, above me, beyond me, through me,
and beside me, but never at me.

Outside the Gates of Hell surged a crowd so vast,
so tempestuous, so unruly, so disarrayed that I know
not how to describe it. Nothing that I have ever
read of beaten armies, of despairing and hunger-
stricken mobs, of men maddened by the thoughts of
plunder and revenge, will help me to paint that
surging ocean of the damned. Its most significant
and awful feature was its tireless vacillation. That
was constant and essential. It took new phases
every moment, like the slimy, frothy, changeful
stuff in some sorceress's shameful cauldron. Here
bubbled up shapeless abortions from the bottom.
There sank from the top things terrible and things
obscene. But always vacillation was the dominant.
Fear was uppermost, and fear was the begetter of the
wavering and despair.

Like some monstrous jelly quaked and quivered
the throng, or shivered and grew still for an instant of
unstable equilibrium more atrocious even than the
wild lap and surge, and the eddying rushes that
succeeded it. And all the time there was clear,
ringing laughter in the air — not from the crowd
outside, for they were speechless, but from inside
the Gates. It was c Laughter heard off.' The most
dreadful thing about this laughing was not that it
was almost silvery in tone, but that it was drilled,
regular, controlled — made to order. It was the
laugh of an infernal claque — of people ordered to
laugh, and of people who knew and did their horrible
business perfectly. May I never hear that rippling,

86 THE RIVER OF LIFE

shimmering sound again ! It must come from the
plaee from which come the smiles, the gestures, the
voiees, and the beckonings of the mad. The dreadful
faces seemed as nothing to that far-away, limpid,
yet cheerless laughter floating up from the deepest
depths of the Pit, far, far down, beyond even the
reach of thought.

The crowd surged and shivered, sweated and
splashed round the Gates, and the grim guardians
were perpetually pulling in batches of the men and
women who had been thrown up by that sea of sorrow,
or rather of despair, for sorrow has something in it of
dignity and gentleness. Here was no dignity, but
all was savagery and implacable discouragement.

Yet not quite all. As I watched more narrowly —
it was the privilege of that dreadful place that all
one's faculties were turned to an inhuman pitch of
sensitiveness — I saw standing close outside the gates,
yet not of the armies of the lost, some of those whom
Bunyan calls ' Shining Ones.5 These Shining Ones
scanned the men and women before them keenly
and not unkindly, and every now and again they
would seem to recognize and then single out an
individual.

These they took gently aside, and led them to
where I saw a little archway hardly four feet high in a
great wall capped by a cloud, and, what was strange,
inside the arch were steps that seemed to go upwards,
not down. But it was a winding staircase, and those
who trod it after they had bowed their heads and
bent their knees to enter were soon lost to view.
And I noticed that those whom the Shining Ones
touched by the shoulder and led by the hand to the
little low archway seemed at once to lose the strange,
rigid contraction but an instant before that had
belonged to them, as to all that throng. They grew

A DAY-DREAM OF THE GATES OF HELL 87

suddenly relaxed. With tears and low lamentations
and tremors of the limbs, they leant on the Shining
Ones as if they felt once more the pains of dissolution.
Yet a moment before they had seemed things of steel
or granite.

Often they were of a prouder and more self-possessed
bearing than the rest, and did not share the vacilla-
tion of the crowd, but marched even to the Gates of
Hell itself with head erect and a brave, confident air.
I saw one especially who bore himself like some
gallant soldier almost without fear, or, at any rate,
with fear nobly repressed. His arm enfolded a
woman. But her face was knotted with horror and
dread, and again and again she buried her teeth in
his shoulder in her selfish and shameless agony. He,
however, looked down on her with something that
even in the blue glare seemed like mercy and loving-
kindness. I could even — greatest miracle of all in
such a place ! — hear him speak. ' I '11 stand by you
whatever happens. I '11 go with you to Hell itself.
They can't separate us. I '11 make it impossible.
We '11 face it together whatever it is.' But she
did not listen or regard him, but only struggled to
get free, and frowned and spat on him in her
dumb fury.

When the Shining One touched the man's shoulder,
he whom I had thought so haughty and so hard
fluttered and grew quiet like a captured bird. The
splendid taut thews and sinews gave way. The
fierce blue eyes softened and shone like those of a girl.
His arms fell to his sides, and the woman sprang
away from him, shaking him off with malice and
rage. Spurning him with her foot, she ran hither
and thither in her fierce panic. For him that touch
of the Shining One's finger had been the wave of
Lethe. He had already forgotten everything — even

88 THE RIVER OF LIFE

her for whom he had marched to the Infernal Portals
and dared the powers of Hell to keep him out. Very
gently they led him to the little archway, set his feet
upon the stair, and I saw him no more.

Then I turned to one who stood near me, and whom
I knew for a guide to those who wander in their dreams
to places strange and fearful, and asked him the
meaning of what I had seen, and he answered : There
is a way to Heaven, even from the Gates of Hell, as well
as from the City of Salvation.

Then I remembered that I must shake myself out
of my reverie, and go and find out whether the
Surgeons had finished. And then I heard their feet
in the passage, and in a moment I knew that all had
gone well. I had gone through the way to Heaven,
though I had been waiting at the other Gate.

VOLTAIRE ON THE BATTLE OF JUTLAND

13th May 1923. — As a pendant to the waking dream
I described yesterday I may take another into which
my thoughts were cast at a moment of great national
crisis, and when the whole British people were suffering
from an intense reaction of perplexity.

The way in which the Government's amazing
method of putting forth the news of the Battle of
Jutland reacted on me was certainly original. For
my day-dream I had to go to the Elysian Fields
and borrow the pen of Voltaire. A day-dreaming
spirit is nothing if not adventurous and self-confident.
He would bandy compliments with all the Gods in
the Pantheon if the mood were on him. At any rate
I felt that if in the Elysian Fields they are moved at
all by mortal things, we might be sure that Voltaire
watched with eagle eyes Le Roi des Bulgares trying
to Prussianize the world. We may be sure, also, I

VOLTAIRE ON BATTLE OF JUTLAND 89

argued with myself, that Voltaire, if he writes as well
as watches, is full of sympathetic reflections on the
English, for he loved our nation ; and if he did not
build us a synagogue, he at any rate raised to us an
eternal monument in his letters on England — Anglis
erexit Voltaire. He could not keep his pen off the
people who always amused him so immensely, and
yet touched his fierce, hard, mocking spirit as children
touch men who are too cynical and saturnine to show
human feeling to ' grown-ups.' Such persons may
see men or women lying wounded in a ditch and pass
by on the other side, but cannot for an instant resist
the appeal of the child. My next step was to assume
that if Voltaire had been watching and writing of
England, he must have been delighted beyond all
measure by the way in which we took the greatest
naval battle in our history, and made it a subject,
not for flags, toasts, and triumphs, but for indulgence
in a perfect orgy of spleen, self- depreciation, abuse
of ourselves and our rulers, and for a general display
of melancholic gloom of the most approved East Wind
kind. (My readers will remember Voltaire's de-
liriously whimsical attribution of English mental
eccentricities to the inability of the race to endure
cold, dry winds.) The weather and the occasion,
Voltaire was sure to have explained to his colleagues,
all contributed to afford the English people an oppor-
tunity of showing off their national characteristics
to the full. I soon imagined him gravely thanking the
Kaiser for having proved so perfect a circus-master.
4 Before the eyes of a delighted Europe he has been
putting the lion through his paces — including, of
course, the final bolt for the cage- door, with the
lion's teeth in the black and yellow coat-tails as they
whisk through the aperture into safety.' Then I
began to go off properly. I saw that a new Voltaire

90 THE RIVER OF LIFE

letter on England had been laid on my desk. I took
it up and found it read as follows :

'Dear , — The English are a great people, a

brave people, and a people who, in spite of their
phlegm, and of all appearances to the contrary, are
at heart optimists. No doubt they conceal the fact
with a cloak which a fool or an enemy would declare
to be made of hypocrisy, but in truth it is nothing
of the kind. If you could have seen them during the
last two days and watched how they received the news
of the great sea battle lately fought in the North
Sea, you would have been exasperated at first, but
later I am sure you would have learnt, like me, not
only to love but to understand them. Any other
people would have perceived at once that their
Fleet had won a victory. It had stopped the enemy
doing what he wanted to do, whatever that was — and
who can say what Potsdam may not want when once
its lusts are stirred ? It had driven him oft the sea
and back into his ports, and further it was left to sail
the battlefield in proud possession.

4 " What more can heart desire ? " would have been
the cry in Paris or Madrid. Not so with the English.
They only perceived a magnificent opportunity to
show the world what the spleen can do at its height.
Though they had the facts which I have just given
staring them in the face, there was not a bright eye
or a happy countenance in the country. Every
man, woman, and child was plunged in melancholy,
and melancholy of a very angry kind. They were
determined to enjoy to the full what one of their poets
has called " the luxury of woe," and, but for their
essential goodness of heart, I should have added, of
arrogant ill-temper. They were " of all men most
miserable." (You must always pardon these islanders
a quotation from Peter or Paul. They know their
Bibles far too well, and quote on every possible and
impossible occasion !) They were disgraced, they
were ruined, they had lost the command of the sea —
how, they did not explain, and at the moment it was

VOLTAIRE ON BATTLE OF JUTLAND 91

positively not safe to ask them. To have done so
would have been to win a drubbing from people
who the next moment were declaring that all spirit,
courage, steadfastness, and what not had utterly and
for ever abandoned the English race. For the future
any man might slap their faces or kick their hinder
parts without the slightest trepidation. It was all
over. They could never recover from the humiliation
and despair of this black Friday.

*You will say, perhaps, that all this melancholy
was really the result of the humanity of the English,
and of their sorrow at the great loss of life, and even
more at the loss of those precious ships which the
Englishman loves as other men love animals or old
customs. Only the English manage to worship in-
animate things, though, of course, they will not allow
their " coursers of the brine " to be inanimate. No ;
that is not the explanation.

' The English know how to suffer losses without
blenching. As their greatest General said, " They
like a big butcher's bill." It stirs their sluggish
spirits to hear of great losses, huge slaughters, and
heroic sacrifices. They endure death and wounds
easily enough. It was the luxury of self-depreciation,
the joy of hitting their own heads hard, which they
could not resist when so good an opportunity offered
itself. The temptation was increased by the fact
that the Lords of the Admiralty, who are also English-
men and share the national feeling, led off the chorus
of adoration of the great goddess of Spleen in a style
of special magnificence. We have all heard the
expression " Lie like a bulletin." The English will
some day vary it to " Weep like a bulletin." So
lachrymose was the manner in which Milords an-
nounced the news of the sea fight that it took even
a Frenchman a little time to realize what the docu-
ment was so zealously concealing. Not merely was
its general tone funereal, but there was visible an
almost savage attempt to exaggerate the English
losses and conceal those of the enemy.

92 THE RIVER OF LIFE

c The English took the cue instantly and joyfully,
and wept and would not be comforted. Yet I
honestly believe that all the time those amazing
islanders were cherishing in their secret hearts the
knowledge that things were really quite satisfactory,
and that after a good howl they would enjoy all the
more the delights of victory. I have heard that one
of their youthful poets now on this side Lethe and
the Styx was in the habit of putting the strongest
cayenne pepper down his throat and enduring tem-
porary torture, in order that later he might the
more enjoy the coolness of his claret, as they all call
Bordeaux in London — and, by the way, there is none
better than that stored in the cellars of England.
They tend it as if it were a rare plant.

4 Well, this, I am sure, is what the English people
were doing last week. As I write they are beginning
to acknowledge how delicious cool claret tastes to a
burnt throat. Finally, they will return to sobriety
and sound business, and will reckon up their gains in
the true counting-house style. " What a people ! "
you will say. " They are impossible ! Frenzied and
incomprehensible barbarians ! " Perhaps. And yet,
somehow, delightful barbarians with a true worship
for intellect, science, and even, incredible as it may
sound, art.

1 Their loyalty, if not their discrimination, is
amazing. In truth, if I may whisper it in your ear,
of discrimination and discretion they have none. Of
literary and artistic valour, however, there is plenty.
If they think you are a genius, they will go through
fire and water to save and serve you, and never even
ask to see your certificates. It is sufficient if you
yourself swear that you are the authentic son of Apollo.
They do not know why they cherish genius. It is
enough if the mystic label is there. I admit that
they cannot understand genius as we understand it,
but at any rate they adore it. Do you wonder, then,
that I pardon all their gloomy, and even graceless,
follies and eccentricities, their crudities and aberra-

SAINTLY DEVILS AND DEVILISH SAINTS 93

tions ? I claim for them the right to indulge their
spleen to any extent they may desire. As long as
they recognize the heroes of the mind and will die to
protect them, what man of letters or of genius can be
so base as to deny his bravest bodyguard ?

4 Truly the English have never delighted and
amused me more than within the past few days.
They are a noble people, and I hug myself and them
for their delicious inconsequence. It is Rabelais and
Don Quixote come to life in the plump body of
M. Jourdain, and yet with it all the stern trumpet
of Mars fires the heart. If you want to go into battle,
have an Englishman at your right hand — yes, and
another at your left, and, I may add, two immedi-
ately in front and two close behind. There is some-
thing in the English which seems to guarantee
security. Never forget that, even when you are most
irritated by the antics of these engaging madmen.

4 With profound respect and in the best of tempers,
* Believe me, dear Sir, to be

1 Your devoted friend and admirer

6 Voltaire.'

SAINTLY DEVILS AND DEVILISH SAINTS

Iteh May 1923. — I have been seeing during the last
two days a good deal of S. H. and N. P. There could
not be a greater contrast. S. H. is a saint with a touch
of the devil — a quite attractive combination. One
can never accuse him of being priggish, or humble,
or mawkishly good, for the tartness of the diabolic
strain is always coming out and making him speak
with stimulating asperity. With this strong anti-
septic there is no danger of his milk of human kindness,
which is, all the same, his great quality, turning sour.
What a contrast is afforded by N. P.: — he is the devil
with a touch of the saint, rather like Silia in Pope.
He has the gentlest and most charming manner, and

94 THE RIVER OF LIFE

you feel it would pain him to hurt a fly far more than
it would hurt the insect. He will take infinite trouble
to do you small services, and throughout his life he
has never said anything disagreeable to anybody, and
an immense number of pleasant things to people who
did not particularly deserve an honorarium. He
would far rather please you than not please you, and
is always laying little schemes for doing unnecessary
kindnesses, if there can be such things as unnecessary
kindnesses ! The kindnesses I mean in this case are
kindnesses which he is under no obligation to do,
which are purely gratuitous, and which in a sense
are not the least deserved. N. P. carries benevolence
about with him in a bottle, and is not merely proud
of it, but uses it as a means of making himself comfort-
able and happy. Any one who has read Lord Halifax's
inimitable picture of Charles n. and his analysis of the
King's good humour will readily understand what I
mean. The base of N. P.'s charm and kindness,
and sunniness of temper, and good humour, is a
supreme egotism, supremely organized. Not only
can he not bear a scene, but he cannot bear to see
anybody unhappy. A craving face, or even an
anxious face, or an unsatisfied face, is a non-conductor
of the unbroken sense of happiness, which is his ideal.
Yet all the time one feels that underneath there is a
very large proportion of devil, and a calculating devil
who has worked out the exact amount of sacrifice
which it is worth while for A to make in order to
ensure happiness in B, and so prevent B's unhappi-
ness possibly endangering his, A's, own. In a word,
he takes enormous care to prevent B's house catching
fire, not out of real affection for B, but because he
thinks the fire might spread to his own house — awful
thought ! And yet such an adept is A in the manage-
ment of life that he makes B feel that he is a naturally

SAINTLY DEVILS AND DEVILISH SAINTS 95

benevolent person, and, indeed, ends by persuading
himself that he is. For all practical purposes he
becomes — or, at any rate, seems to become — one of
the best men in the world.

I have thought out a test to apply to these natures
in order to prove which is made of the true gold. I
put it this way to myself. I should very much prefer
to be stormbound in a country inn for three or four
days with N. P. For fear of the position becoming
strained and disagreeable he would lay himself out
to make everything pleasant and delightful, and to
smooth life for both of us. But if I had to live for
a month on a desert island, with Death hunting us up
and down the shore and through the forest, I should
infinitely prefer S. H. As things got worse and worse,
he would get nicer and nicer, more good-tempered and
more helpful. In the inn S. H. would probably have
taken the opportunity to tell me for my good all my
failings and would look like thunder during the
process. N. P., on the other hand, would talk as if
I was a perfect character, and dwell so artfully on all
my good qualities that at the time I should feel myself
to be the best and noblest of mankind.

But though S. H. might make himself disagreeably
virtuous at the inn, on the island he would not preach
a single sermon. He would be cheerful and lovable
beyond words, and show c the sunshine of the breast,'
of which Gray speaks — not the brilliant electric light
which N. P. uses as a substitute. When the last
morsel of food was gone, which I fear would not have
been fairly shared, and we settled down to die, I
should know as my eyes closed for the last time that
on the other side he would take my hand as naturally
as if I were going lame in a big crowd and lead me
through the door of Heaven. While the angels
saluted, St. Peter would bow and declare in his softest

96 THE RIVER OF LIFE

and clearest tones that ' the friend who is with you,
S. H., will be welcome without examination or testi-
monials of any kind.' S. H. would be amazed, though
not I, at the whole incident. He would try to make
out that there was some mistake, something wrong,
and would insist that this sort of reception could
obviously not be meant for him. However, the
angelic guide would gently push us in explaining :
c You did not realize, then, that you have had the
grande entree accorded to you for years and years ?
However, it is very often like that with people like
you, and in any case it makes no difference. The
trouble is that there are such millions of people who
are certain that they have got the grande entree, or,
at any rate, the ordinary entree, when, as a matter of
fact, they have been marked C 3, or even queried
D 1. It is most disagreeable work explaining the
matter to them, poor dears, and in their disappoint-
ment they often become quite cross, and so get some
rough talk. St. Peter, you know, is still a little
inclined to be hasty in speech.'

WHAT IS TRUTH ?

15th May 1923. — Another Day-Dream. There are,
of course, plenty of ways of escaping so crude an
interrogatory. I might express my disgust at this
attempt, a la Pilate, to cry ' Hands up ! ' to the
Diarist. . . .

Again, I might urge with scornful Mme. du Deffand
that he who defines is insufferable — a social and
intellectual leper. If I remember rightly, the last
brick that amazing lady threw at her immortal ' lady
companion's ' head was : ' Elle definit ! ' All the
same, there is a good deal of attraction in a voyage
of discovery after Truth. One's adventures would be

WHAT IS TRUTH ? 97

like those of the Prince in the story who was always
trying to find the land at the back of the North Wind.
He was always being told that, if he went to the
nearest witch, she would be delighted to direct him.

That view of the quest led me not long ago to a
day-dream. I envisaged my Prince, being a natural
and simple soul, going first to the Lady Logic and
asking her what Truth was. The grey-faced Goddess
told him that she could only inform him conditionally.

1 If you will allow me two " ifs " or sometimes pos-
sibly only one "if," I can tell you exactly what the
Truth is about anything and everything — tell you to
a hair's- breadth and with absolute certainty. But I
must have my " if." '

And then she babbled on with her conditional
syllogism. ' If all men are mortal and if the Prince
is a man, then the Prince must die. That is Truth
eternal, Truth adamantine, the Truth that nothing
can alter. But who am I that I should tell you for
certain that all men are mortal, or that you, delightful
Prince, are a man ? How can I tell ? I have not seen
all men but only some men, and it is possible, though
not likely, that in the future an immortal man may be
born. In matters so important I cannot trifle with
likelihoods. I must have my " if." If you expect
more, you expect too much.'

No wonder the Prince was politely but somewhat
disdainfully angry. He had always thought Logic a
very different person, some one who gave out dead
certainties, not ' ifs,' not a mere harmless and neces-
sary little creature who merely did odd jobs about
the House of Thought, but an inspiring Goddess ; and
he told her so. Lady Logic, thus put on her mettle,
answered that, even if she was small and humble in
appearance, she was really great, or, at any rate, as
great as anything in this wide sad world.

o

98 THE RIVER OF LIFE

c Even if I am a very small thing, I am the only
thing, the only instrument in the realms of Thought,
the only process, the only method of reasoning, the
only step by which the mind can rise to higher things.
It is me or nothing. Despise me if you will, but you
cannot advance an inch in the realms of Thought
without me. I am in those realms what the atom or
the electron is in the realm of Matter — the ultimate
thing, the sine qua non, the last and least, but always
the last. If you press on to the end, all else will fall
away and desert you. Then you will discover that
man stands alone in the universe with nothing but
movement, pel ra irdvra, the eternal flux ; something
to move or to move in ; and me — the syllogism. Then
call me a foot-rule if you dare.5

Did the Prince have no answer ? Did he leave the
lady with the last word ? No ! Like a true man, he
defied her, though at heart he feared her ; or rather,
feared she might be right.

1 Logic, you are growing arrogant. You have for-
gotten something — something which differs from you
because it is not dead but alive, something which can
put in motion both you and the electron, something
which can create, and so partakes of God — Conscious-
ness. Consciousness is a fact, not a cramping hypo-
thesis, supported by a couple of phantasmal " ifs."
It is the unmistakable, the undeniable thing, the
simple mystery. You and your electron are but
shadows. Here is the one great reality, the thing
essential, the causa causans. The rest is silence and
the shadow of a name. I do not ask whether I am
conscious — whether I can think. I know that I can.
I am an I, — because I think. In my consciousness I
find a conclusion that needs no premises.'

And now the vision grows clearer. I see the Prince
going on with his quest, and being boxed about from

WHAT IS TRUTH ? 99

one goddess, ghost, or spirit to another, till at last he
finds himself in front of the veil that no man can draw,
and hears, or sees (or thinks he heard or saw) something
moving behind it. Worn with years and spent with
searching, he puts his question in an agony of doubt,
lest he should find that, after all, there is no such thing
as Truth, and that he has been playing with a word.
And then a voice comes from behind the veil — a voice
low, clear, deep and yet vibrant, which tells him that
he may be content with his ignorance. Why should
he be so disturbed not to know what the Truth is
when he is in the same ignorance of all the other great
and essential things of which he is conscious ?

c Do you know what Life is, or what Death is, or
what Time is, or what Space is ? You cannot tell
what Movement is, or if there is indeed such a thing.
You cannot define matter, much less consciousness.
You cannot even tell what Love is. And yet you deal
with all these things and do not despair. Why, then,
should you quail and shudder because Truth will no
more give you up her secret than will these other
mysteries ? It is just because I, Truth, am great and
eternal, and a reality, that I cannot tell you what I
am. Yet you may live for me, thirst for me, fight for
me, die for me, be inspired by me, and believe in me
as much as you believe in the unprovables Life and
Death. Does the soldier ask to stop the battle in
order that he may be told exactly why Zero was half-
past four and not some other time ? Are you going
to be less brave and less confident than he ? '

And so the Prince at the end of his quest went back
content, if not enlightened ; able, if not to answer the
question, ' What is Truth ? ', at least to say : ' I
know when you do not ask me.' Quieted by an
ignorance so august and so inspiring, he awaited the
appointed hour.

100 THE RIVER OF LIFE

THE OLD CONTEMPTIBLES

16th May 1923. — I have made a discovery. The
Kaiser, in his vulgar arrogance, could not contrive
even verbal originality. That treasure-house of gay
and gallant mysticism, the Religio Medici, anticipates
him by some two hundred and fifty years.

' This makes me naturally love a soldier and honour
those ragged and contemptible regiments that will die at
the command of a Sargeant?

Thus did Browne ' prediscover ' the men of Mons.
It may be remembered in this context that the noble
physician was as much moved by the Navy as by the
Army. Is there not extant a delightful letter to his
son who became a sailor, reminding him that, when
he first determined to go to sea, he (Sir Thomas)
insisted on his studying all the naval battles in
Plutarch ? He was evidently determined that the
classics should be useful as well as ornamental.

THE GODDESS OF TRUTH

17th May 1928. — Apropos of my entry of 15th May
1928 and the River of Life, whence come these words ?

' Even to such an one as I am, an idiota or common
person, no great things, melancholising in woods and
quiet places by rivers, the Goddess herself, Truth,
has oftentimes appeared.'

I presume this must be by Burton, and in the
Anatomy of Melancholy. But though Burton's Ana-
tomy is supposed to be the only book that Dr. Johnson
ever read twice (unless that distinction belongs to
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's Letters), and the only

LANGUAGE AND ITS WEAKNESS 101

book that got him out of bed two hours sooner than
he wished to rise, I cannot undertake to go through
Burton in order to find the passage. There is no
concordance, though if one were made it would prove
the maddest, merriest piece of pregnant pedantry in
the world of letters.

LANGUAGE AND ITS WEAKNESS

18th May 1923. — The worst part of writing a Diary
is that you begin to ask yourself what you really mean
by the words you employ. Language is in truth the
devil. It is always in danger of expressing too much,
or too little, or something different from what you
mean. Worst of all, what it means to you is not what
it means to A, or to B, or to C. It is often, indeed,
exactly the opposite of what it professes to be — a
medium of communication. It is no wonder, there-
fore, that the philosophers who want to convey an
exact meaning rage at language. The final paragraphs
of Mr. Bertrand Russell's most interesting book, Intro-
duction to Mathematical Philosophy, end with a well-
merited arraignment of language for its inefficiency,
and tell us what an impossible medium it is for con-
veying logical or mathematical truth : —

' It is impossible to convey adequately the ideas
that are concerned in the subject so long as we abstain
from the use of logical symbols. Since ordinary
language has no words that naturally express exactly
what we wish to express, it is necessary, so long as
we adhere to ordinary language, to strain words into
unusual meanings ; and the reader is sure, after a
time if not at first, to lapse into attaching the usual
meanings to words, thus arriving at wrong notions as
to what is intended to be said. Moreover, ordinary
grammar and syntax is extraordinarily misleading.

102 THE RIVER OF LIFE

This is the case, for example, as regards numbers :
" ten men " is grammatically the same form as
" white men," so that " ten " might be thought to be
an adjective qualifying " men." It is the case, again,
wherever propositional functions are involved, and in
particular as regards existence and descriptions.
Because language is misleading, as well as because it
is diffuse and inexact when applied to logic (for which
it was neyer intended), logical symbolism is absolutely
necessary to any exact or thorough treatment of our
subject.'

I am sure Mr. Russell is right, though I am too old
and lazy and intellectually unreformed to learn the
use of symbols.

In this context, and as illustrating the uselessness
of language, I should like to put side by side with
Mr. Russell's words a wonderful analysis of the
meaning of music, and of what one might call the
superiority, because of its universality, of music as a
medium. It is to be found in a letter of Mendelssohn's
to Marc- Andre Souchay, written in October 1842. The
artist, it will be seen, is as impatient of language as is
the philosopher :

4 There is so much talk about music and so little
really said. My belief is, in fact, that words are in-
sufficient for the purpose, and if I ever found they
were sufficient, I should ultimately never write any
more music. People generally complain that music
is capable of so many interpretations ; they are so
uncertain what they ought to understand by it,
whereas everybody would understand words. To me
it is just the other way. And it is not merely whole
sentences, but single words too that seem to me
capable of so many interpretations, so indefinite, so
unintelligible in comparison with real good music,
which fills one's soul with a thousand better things
than words. Music that I love expresses to me

LANGUAGE AND ITS WEAKNESS 103

thought, not too indefinite, but too definite, to put
into words. And so I find that in all attempts to
translate these thoughts (into words) there is some-
thing legitimate, but in all of them something un-
satisfactory, and that is what I feel about your
attempts. This, however, is not your fault, but the
fault of the words, which cannot help themselves. If
you ask me what I had in my mind, I can only say :
" Just the song as it stands." And if I did in one
case or another have a definite word or words in my
mind, still I would rather not tell anybody what they
were, because a word does not mean the same to any
one person as it does to another, because only the
song itself can say the same thing to one person as to
another.5

Whether this side of music will ever be developed,
and we shall find the man of thought of the future
putting the Principia Mathematica into Sonatas, or
giving an absolute, general, and convincing proof
of some new proposition in a fugue, remains to be
seen. Given the truth of Mendelssohn's generaliza-
tions, it ought not to be impossible. The idea would
certainly have delighted the Greeks, who were always
feeling after the connection between pure science and
the arts. After all, did not Pythagoras, when he had
discovered the forty- seventh proposition, sacrifice his
oxen to the Muses and not to Pallas Athene ? Renan
of course had a similar idea. Here is his prophecy
that the philosophy of the future would have to be
dramatically or indeed operatically expressed. I
would go further and say you might use the ballet
and dance as an interpretation of time and space.
At any rate, here is Renan' s view :

4 Dialogue is to me the only form which in the
present stage of human thought is suitable for the
setting forth of philosophical ideas. These kind of

104 THE RIVER OF LIFE

truths can neither be directly denied nor directly
affirmed, — neither could they properly be the objects
for demonstration. All one can do is to present them
in all their divers facets, to show strength, weakness,
necessity, equivalents. All the higher problems of
humanity are in this position. Who would attempt
nowadays to give a systematic explanation of political
science ? The great moral and social questions end
in interim conclusions, all agreeable but all incompat-
ible with each other. Political economy is nothing
but an eternal debate between two systems, of which
neither will ever supplant the other nor convince it of
its fundamental error.

' It all hinges on the fundamental difference
between belief and knowledge, conjecture and cer-
tainty. Dialogues are not made about geometry
because geometry is an impersonal truth. But all
that implies a science of faith, of conscious adherence
of choice, antipathy, sympathy, hate and love, is well
set forth by a mode of exposition in which each
opinion is incarnated in a human personality who
believes as a mortal being. These reasons led me one
day to choose the dialogue form to explain certain
sequences of ideas. Then I found that dialogue alone
was not enough — that action was essential, that
dramas which express freely, though without local
colour in the Shakespearian manner, brought out
shades of meaning in a much subtler way. Actual
history, which has taken place, is not the only kind
that is interesting ; for by the side of it runs the
history of the spirit, which in the material sense has
never existed, but which in a spiritual sense has had
a thousand lives. Coriolanus and Julius Caesar are
not pictures of Roman customs ; they are studies in
an eternal psychology.

' I have tried without any elaborate staging to do
something analogous to this. The drama is the best
of literary forms. Imaginative work is only complete
if the author can show the creatures of his fancy in
concerted action, living, speaking, acting. Philo-

LANGUAGE AND ITS WEAKNESS 105

sophy, at the point of subtlety at which it has now
arrived, marvellously accommodates itself to a mode
of exposition where there is no dogmatism and where
everything melts, opposes, blends. One doesn't
attempt to follow strictly the rules of formal logic,
rather to strengthen the proofs of the existence of
God and the soul's immortality.

' Men realize at this moment that they never can
know anything of the supreme cause of the universe,
or their own destiny. And yet they want to have it
put before them. Dramatic action is worth more in
bringing out doubts, half-lights, audacities, followed
by recoils, flights of fancy, than only abstract dis-
cussion. The author of the book of Job understood
this seven hundred or eight hundred years before
Christ. The last word in modern philosophy will be
in a drama, or rather an opera — for music and the
illusions of the lyric stage would be an admirable help
to thought, from the point where words fail to express
it. So it is possible thus to conceive an aristocratic
state when intelligent people should form the public
of a philosophic theatre which should be one of the
most powerful mediums of ideas and the most effective
exponent of the highest culture. Obviously such a
theatre would have nothing in common with the
ordinary stage as exemplified by a music hall, where
foreigners, provincials, and bourgeois are only trying
to spend an agreeable evening. It would never do
for this honest diversion to disappear, but there should
be something more. In books, side by side with the
volumes destined for the public library, there is the
volume whose success lies in its appreciation by
several hundred connoisseurs. But in the drama the
equivalent of the aristocratic book does not exist.
The necessity of attracting each evening twelve or
fifteen hundred people, who must be amused, has
created for the theatre a similar situation to that
which would have happened to literature, if it had
not been possible to publish any books which would
not be certain of ten thousand readers.

106 THE RIVER OF LIFE

4 One of the richest of the arts is thus forbidden to
the higher Thought. Victor Hugo was always on the
razor-edge in this matter. He realized the superiority
of the drama, its incomparable strength, and his
genius refused to submit to its mean expedients. His
corsets hampered him to the point that he finished
by rejecting them altogether. Hence his Theatre en
liberie.

c My dear master and friend, Baron Eckstein, once
wrote a play which began before the world was in
being by a conversation in the bosom of the Trinity.
In the regrettable absence of this dialogue, which
would assuredly be the most delightful to hear (the
world being the result of internal dialogue between
the Father and the Son), I have tried to make some
suggestions for a few fancies, which each reader can
continue when he chances to be sleepless. The picture
of human life is only complete if there is a place for
comedy beside tears, for pity beside anger, and for
laughter beside reverence.'

RACINE

19^ May 1923. — A day in bed with a bad cold,
most sordid, squalid, base and brutal of minor
maladies, has subdued my spirit to a mood in which
Racine's Phedre seemed appropriate. But in truth
the cold was only an excuse. I can make almost
anything an excuse to read Racine, and my little
bedroom copy of the Plays opens naturally at Phedre.
A great play, a great poet, and in the best sense a
great tour de force. It is a miracle of art, a triumph
over a world of obstacles ! Racine begins by taking
a view of his story at once arid and preposterous.
He has no instinctive sympathy with the Greek spirit
and does not understand its origin or impulses in the
least. He sees his Hellenic heroes in periwigs and

RACINE 107

shorts. They are Parisians of the Grande Monarchie.
There is no suggestion of an Athenian atmosphere.

We may be told that the scene passes at a town in
the Peloponnese, but we know quite well that it passes
at Versailles. One catches oneself, indeed, wondering
whether St. Simon does not hint at some super-scandal
of the Court, of which this is a reflection dressed en
Grec.

But though Racine has loaded himself with such a
monstrous burden of disabilities, they fall off him the
instant he really gets to work. Like the oak in the
song in Thomson's Alfred, the thunderbolts of ridicule
only root his verses deeper and stronger in our hearts.
We may come to scoff, but we remain to admire the
perfection of an inestimable art.

The Poet is so sure of himself that he never dreams
of telling us that, if we have tears, we must be pre-
pared to shed them now. That is by no means his
method. He glories in taking us into the enchanted
palace, not merely by the back-door, but by a sort of
squalid basement entrance which he has had fitted up
for the express purpose of cooling us down, and making
us admit that there is no illusion, no artifice, and that
we cannot ever say that he has tricked us of a tear.
If we tremble and weep, it is because we are con-
fronted with a most compelling sense of woe, of the
blindness of destiny, and of the sadness and horror of
human life.

Therefore he begins his awful tragedy, his tale of
terror and dismay, tempest and eclipse, like this :

' Hippolyte. Le dessein est pris ; je pars, cher Theramene,
Et quitte le sejour de l'aimable Trezene.'

As the immortal Mr. Babbitt would say, c Beat it ! '
For pure imbecile pomposity and intellectual squalor
it is unapproachable. ' Aimable Trezene ! ' Great

108 THE RIVER OF LIFE

Heavens ! Why, the place is a moral pest-house, the
very home of Crime and Frenzy, Vice and Murder.
Death and Depravity riot and revel in this Petite
Ville du Peloponese.

Yet the poet is so certain that the next minute he
will have us by the throat that he disdains to freeze
our blood prematurely. And so it 's ' Tiddlewinks-
the- Barber,' and ' aimable Tr6zene,' and ' old man
Theseus,' and ' une tete si chere,' and the rest of it, for
some twenty lines of tepid convention. And then,
before we know what has happened, we have drifted
from our snug little canalized back-water into a deep
and dreadful river, flecked with cruel foam and oily
with strangling eddies. The sound of the rapids is in
our ears. A Hell of waters is calling for our blood
as well as for that of the men and women whose fate
we are watching. And along the darkened banks
range wild presences, — repellent, formless, obscure,
wandering lights and thronging faces, which, though
seen but for a moment, will be swept into our dreams
for ever. The hoarse cries of souls in torment and
despair affright our senses, and over all is the shadow
of inexorable Fate.

Racine seems to be deliberately adopting the device
of the modern conjurer or juggler. In old days the
adept wore long robes and sleeves if he was to do
sleight-of-hand tricks, and eel-like fittings if he was
to perform feats of strength. Now a man got up to
look as much as possible like a waiter at a restaurant
strolls on to the platform. He shows you that his
dress coat is exactly like yours. He smokes a cigar-
ette, and seems as he walks, clumsy and shy and
impossible — a complete amateur. Yet out of his
pockets come rabbits, and goldfish, and top-hats, and
eight-day clocks enough to fit up a shop. Or else in
his tight trousers and stiff white waistcoat, starched

RACINE 109

shirt and collar, he tumbles and jumps, and lets half
a dozen people stand on his head and shoulders.
While they self-consciously drink ' pretend ' beer, he
takes up a chair in his teeth or balances a huge pole
on his chin as a side-show. So Racine in his full-
bottomed wig. We look on him as a pure ' scream '
till he begins, and then — ' Who dares laugh now,
Mr. Speaker ? '

It is curious, and rather disconcerting at first, but
could there be a better proof of greatness ? Racine
is not really telling us about Theseus and Monsieur
Hippolyte and the agreeable ' daughter of Minos
and Pasiphae,' but about the essentials of human
nature, and of how, in spite of man's unconquerable
mind, our Fate is waiting for us in the dark.

But though I pay — and who can do otherwise ? —
the fullest and most sincere homage to Racine, and put
him next after Shakespeare in the power to alarm the
soul and beat up the lazy and disordered camp of the
emotions, I still every now and then see the Louis
Quatorze wigs and the high-heeled shoes with big
black bows on them sticking through the dialogue
and the tirades. But this does not interfere the least
either with my awe or with my boundless enjoyment
of the play and the adorable music of the verse.

Racine can afford to let us laugh at his frigidi-
ties and blind spots. He is too noble an artist to
plaster them with bits of bogus ornament. He is
not in the very least ashamed to be dull and formal
when he considers that his scene demands these quali-
ties. He rises to any and every occasion, but he will
not pretend to do so when there is no cause of exalta-
tion. And so one gets a double pleasure. I weep
with him, sigh, tremble, and grow pale, when he
means me to do so ; but I laugh at him when his
gleaming eye is off me. For example, when Phedre

110 THE RIVER OF LIFE

makes her confession to Oenone, how irresistibly
comic is the explanation, c 0 deplorable race I ' It
exactly expresses the plain man's view, as does also
the prim and appropriate comment, ' Quelles sauvages
mceurs ! ' And yet how soon it is followed by the
exquisite lines in which Hippolytus tells Aricie how
his love had grown, and how in vain he had striven
to fly and to forget the beloved :

* Dans les fonds des for£ts votre image me suit,
La lumiere du jour, les ombres de la nuit.
Tout retrace a mes yeux les charmes que j'eVite,
Tout vous livre a l'envi le rebelle Hippolyte.'

1 Through the deep woods your image haunts my flight.
In the sun's blaze and in the shades of night
I see the beauties that I dare not meet.
Nature abhors the rebel Hippolyte.'

RACINE, RACINE, AND AGAIN RACINE

20ih May 1923. — Racine was apparently serenely
unconscious that an author who deals in wide general-
ities requires to exercise a good deal of art lest he
should trip himself up. He must be his own censor.
If not, like the lady in Congreve, he will become the
thing that he despises. Racine, however, flounders
in and never notices. Phidre affords an example.

The critical, or even the uncritical reader, when he
gets breath, is apt to complain, and not without cause,
that there is a turbid superfluity of adultery and incest
in the play. It is no doubt necessary to have these
crimes dealt with, as they are the essential theme of
the tragedy, but we cannot find them on every page
without getting first bored, then annoyed, and finally
hysterical at their ' damned iteration.' It is clear,

RACINE, RACINE, AND AGAIN RACINE 111

however, that Racine never imagined that you could
overwork this part of the business. He actually puts
into the mouth of poor Hippolyte the very protests on
this score which are made by the ordinary reader.
The fascinating, tender-hearted, and shamefully used
jeune premier gets the thing on his nerves just as we
do. He practically threatens to ' strike,' or goes as
near to it as could be expected of so virtuous and
much enduring a character. In the first interview
the worried and choleric Theseus, a ' heavy father '
who outweighs ' twenty Atlantics,' bludgeons his son
as follows :

1 Va chercher des amis dont l'estime funeste
Honore l'adultere, applaudisse a l'inceste.'

This is the last straw. The worm turns at last, and,
to our intense satisfaction, is for the moment thor-
oughly ' nasty ' :

1 Vous me parlez toujours d'inceste et d'adultere ?
Je me tais. Cependant Phedre sort d'une mere,
Phedre est d'un sang Seigneur, vous le savez trop bien,
De toutes ces horreurs plus rempli que le mien.'

1 And so say all of us I ' and c Thank you for putting
it so plainly.' These are the irresistible comments of
applause that rise as the passage hits our astonished
and much relieved eyes. One has subconsciously
wanted somebody to speak out just like that ever
since the second scene, and here we are fitted to a
nicety. No wonder we feel grateful. That ' Cepen-
dant Phedre ' is one of the most human things in high
tragedy. It makes amends for oceans of c hot air.'
Poor Hippolyte, poor put-upon, honest lad, always
getting it in the neck, and always too much of a
gentleman and good son to hit back ; you really have
done it this time ! We who read the play already

112 THE RIVER OF LIFE

know that you are going off to have a most uncom-
fortable interview with the timid and thoroughly
unadventurous jeune fille, Aricie. We try to think
that you admire the way in which she shows off her
delicacy of feeling, but no one can pretend she is the
kind of hearty, sympathetic, girl-guide sort of young
woman you would really like to run off with. The
critical reader is indeed far more inclined to pity the
hero in this scene than when the wild cat-Phedre is
mauling him, or when Theseus goes for him with the
moral crowbar.

If I were to start a convalescent home for the
misunderstood heroes of Grand Drama, I should open
my house with M. Hippolyte. He never has a dog's
chance. And yet he and his pasteboard Aricie have
handed to them, so strange are the ways of poets,
one of the most exquisite coronals ever woven from
the flowers of verse :

' Les a-t-on vus souvent se parler, se chercher ?
Dans le fond des forets allaient-ils se cacher ?
Helas ! ils se voyaient avec pleine licence.
Le ciel de leurs soupirs approuvait 1' innocence ;
Ils suivaient sans remords leur penchant amoureux,
Tous les jours se levaient clairs et sereins pour eux.'

As an even greater than Racine has said :

' Now stand they on the top of happy hours.'

And here I may say in parenthesis that I was once
fool enough to think that, because I had made a
moderate success in some original lines on an argu-
mentative subject written in the mode of Dryden, I
could translate this inimitable passage into English
Heroic Couplets. I strove like a wrestling Jacob day
and night. But, like him, the longer I strove, the
weaker and weaker I seemed to get, while the mighty

RACINE ON HOMECOMINGS 113

Racine grew stronger and stronger. Anyway, I
collapsed with only one poor little couplet as the
result of all my strivings. I may as well give it here
as a warning to those who would attempt a translation
of this kind :

1 Their happy loves shall no remorse condemn,
Clear and serene each morning dawns for them.'

And so I leave myself hanging in chains by the way-
side as a warning to future murderers of poets !

I might give hundreds of examples from Phedre of
the oddly prophetic verses which, like so many lines
in Lear's Nonsense Book, Alice in Wonderland, or The
Snark, seem applicable to any and every situation.
Here is one :

1 Avec quelle rigueur, destin, tu me poursuis !
Je ne sais ou je vais, je ne sais ou je suis.
O tendresse ! O bonte trop mal recompensed !
Pro jet audacieux ! detestable pensee ! '

But I must leave Phedre for the time, though I will by
no means promise not to return to Racine, for I want
very much to say a word about the ' homecomings '
in his tragedies.

RACINE ON HOMECOMINGS

22nd June 1923. — I know nothing, or next to
nothing, about Racine's life, and am too fond of a
particular theory, which I have developed, in regard
to its influence on his plays to inquire. A hard fact
or two might bring my card- castle to instant ruin.
Still, I will state my theory, and for two reasons.
The first is that, when I last wrote on Racine in this
Diary, I promised myself a return to the subject.
The other is that I want to see how my theory will
look when put on paper. It is that Racine at some

ii

114 THE RIVER OF LIFE

time of his life lived in a seaport town and associated
with ships' captains and other sailors. I was led to
form my view by the great part played by naval
homecomings in his dramas. As depicted by him,
they are the most tragically uncomfortable and
poignantly painful things in life or literature. Mithri-
dates and Theseus both turn up quite unexpectedly,
to the torment, shame, and confusion of their un-
fortunate families. They were in both cases presumed
to be dead, or at any rate sailing perilous and forlorn
seas with very faint hopes of ever seeing again ' the
well-loved cliffs and happy harbour bar,' etc., etc.
And then they suddenly ' blow in ' 'at Nymphee,
port de mer sur le Bosphore Cimmerien ' or at
1 L'aimable Trezene,' and fall plump into a horrible
cauldron of boiling moral oil. They, poor dears, were
filled with such high hopes of renewed happiness,
connubial bliss, and domestic joy, ' Home and Beauty,'
and the rest. ' How 's dear little Ellie ? '— ' Not that
big girl in the yellow jumper ! My word, she has
grown ! ' — ' Ah ! there 's nothing like home after
all ! ' — ' Well, I may have been a bit wild sometimes,
and Gay Street in Hong Kong and all that, but sailor
men can't be choosers. My heart was always true to
Poll.' — ' That 's the bedrock truth, my dear, and you
know it.' — 6 Nothing like your sweet old face in
foreign parts.' 6 Saw you every night in my dreams.'
— c Why ! even when I was on the uninhabited island
with that silly black girl I didn't think it worth while
to write home about — but there, why rake up an
old legend like that ? — Let the Past eat its own head
off is my motto, and don't worry ! '

And all the time everybody from the Head Confi-
dante to the Palace Cat, every one indeed, except the
wretched hero, knows perfectly well that all this
6 Home, Sweet Home ' business is delirious rubbish.

RACINE ON HOMECOMINGS 115

In the case of the King of Pontus (Mithridates) a
heated confidante rushes in to declare that the sea
harbour is absolutely crawling with ships, and that
the King himself has arrived in the port. The said
confidante is all for prompt action. She wants to
hurry Monime into a black bombazine mourning dress
suitable for half-widows, and, when that is done,
declares that she must rush down to receive him in
the court of the palace. Happily Mithridates insists
on beginning his homecoming * blague ' by an excellent
account of his military campaigns and the celebrated
night attack — an account which enchanted both
Frederick the Great and Napoleon. This gives
Monime time to put some sort of face on the pro-
ceedings, and to dodge the ' breezy ' proposal of
Theseus that the final marriage ceremony should
take place at once, ' as I must be off to-morrow.'
But it is not long before Mithridates is enlightened
as to the whole home situation, though it takes four
acts to get him comfortably killed — but not before he
has given a parental blessing or two. Mithridates, in
truth, is too busy with the local political situation to
be easily disillusioned. He hardly does more at first
than think the home atmosphere rather close and
disagreeable.

The case of Theseus is far worse. Phedre, caught
in an unsuccessful attempt on the virtue of Hippolyte,
immediately denounces him to his father as having
attempted to betray her. The result is that the only
person who is really glad to see Theseus back, i.e. his
son, is instantly exiled, and Theseus retires apart to
pray to Neptune to destroy his innocent offspring.
Minute by minute after his ' martial entry ' he gets
deeper and deeper in the mire of the ' home situation,'
till at last he longs to get back to the road and a life
of adventure. The homecoming of the Sultan in

116 THE RIVER OF LIFE

Bajazet never comes off, but we see what it would
have been like if he had re-entered the seraglio. A
dozen more fatal knots would have been tied, to use
Racine's rather prim description of the Bow-string in
action.

THE LIFE-URGE

1st July 1923. — I have of late been greatly struck
by examples of the almost uncanny way in which the
poets anticipate the philosophers, and still more the
men of science, in what may be called scientific
vaticination. By this I mean passionate reaching out
after new ideas — a rapid reconnaissance over ground
which will later be made good by the men in the
laboratory and the observatory, and by a patient
study of the phenomena.

Arthur Hugh Clough affords a memorable example
in his juvenile poem, Natura naturans — the fascinating
elegy concerned with the anonymous young lady in
the second-class railway carriage. There, as it seems
to me, he is inspired by the idea of Creative Evolution
expounded to us seventy years afterwards by Mr.
Shaw in his Preface to Methuselah. According to
Mr. Shaw, what makes the wheels of the world go
round is not Darwin's Natural Selection or any para-
doxical ' Survival of the fittest ' — called fittest because
they survive, rather than survivors because they are
fittest. It is, instead, the ' Life-Urge ' — that mys-
terious, elemental, august, all-pervasive, circum-
ambient something. It is never seen or discerned
directly, though present in all times, in all places, in
all men's minds. Yet it never fails to make itself
known and prevalent.

Writing before 1849, that is, before the publication
of Darwin's Origin of Species, Clough described this

THE LIFE-URGE 117

all-enthralling, all-embracing impulse. Blind and
dumb it might be, but not purposeless, meaningless, or
imbecile. The poem begins by recounting the glow
of sympathy, the presage of union, a divine spark
between boy and girl. Next he asks whence came
the spark, and answers it by an exposition of the Life-
Urge. Though he does not use the word, his passion-
fused description is exact. The pent-up forces of
Creative Evolution are implicit in his verse. The
lines vibrate with the Life-Urge. But I had better
quote than summarize :

' Beside me — in the car — she sat,

She spake not, no, nor looked to me :
From her to me, from me to her,

What passed so subtly, stealthily ?
As rose to rose that by it blows

Its interchanged aroma flings ;
Or wake to sound of one sweet note

The virtues of disparted strings.

* Beside me, nought but this ! but this,

That influent as within me dwelt
Her life, mine too within her breast,

Her brain, her every limb she felt :
We sat ; while o'er and in us, more

And more, a power unknown prevailed,
Inhaling, and inhaled — and still

'Twas one, inhaling or inhaled.

* As unsuspecting mere a maid

As, fresh in maidhood's bloomiest bloom,
In casual second-class did e'er

By casual youth her seat assume ;
Or vestal, say, of saintliest clay,

For once by balmiest airs betrayed
Unto emotions too, too sweet

To be unlingeringly gainsaid.'

118 THE RIVER OF LIFE

* Unowning then, confusing soon

With dreamier dreams that o'er the glass
Of shyly ripening woman-sense

Reflected, scarce reflected, pass,
A wife may-be, a mother she

In Hymen's shrine recalls not now,
She first in hour, ah, not profane,

With me to Hymen learnt to bow.'

The girl may have ignored the Life-Urge. She cer-
tainly could not recall it. Yet the sweep and power
of that imperious Spring- tide was none the less a fact,
and none the less visible to the poet in his hour of
ecstasy and insight. The poet can remember and
record, as well as feel, what the ordinary man, even
when he feels, can only feel and forget. Did the girl
know what the elusive thrill of emotion meant to her,
to him, and to the world? Here Clough asks and
answers questions fraught with a pathos deep and
magnificent :

' Ah no ! — Yet owned we, fused in one,

The Power which e'en in stones and earths

By blind elections felt, in forms

Organic, breeds to myriad births ;

By lichen small on granite wall
Approved, its faintest feeblest stir

Slow spreading, strengthening long, at last
Vibrated full in me and her.

' In me and her — sensation strange !

The lily grew to pendent head,
To vernal airs the mossy bank

Its sheeny primrose spangles spread,
In roof o'er roof of shade sun-proof

Did cedar strong itself outclimb,
And altitude of aloe proud

Aspire in floreal crown sublime,

THE LIFE-URGE 119

* Flashed flickering forth fantastic flies,

Big bees their burly bodies swung,
Rooks roused with civic din the elms,

The lark its wild reveillez rung ;
In Libyan dell the light gazelle,

The leopard lithe in Indian glade,
And dolphin, brightening tropic seas,

In us were living, leapt and played.

* Their shells did slow Crustacea build,

Their gilded skins did snakes renew,
While mightier spines for loftier kind

Their types in amplest limb outgrew ;
Yea, close comprest in human breast,

What moss, and tree, and livelier thing,
What Earth, Sun, Star of force possesst

Lay budding, burgeoning forth for spring.'

Though I am no man of science, it seems to me that
here the poet is in truth setting forth the very view
which Mr. Shaw urges on us with such energy and
such mastery of words in the Preface to Methuselah.
Clough stumbled seventy years ago on the essential
truth. Would Mr. Shaw, I wonder, write under it
' Approved ' ? Certainly he must applaud the stanzas
as vital poetry. As we read the poem, we feel the
1 Life-Urge ' in our very bones. It is the kind of art
that, in the words of Emily Bronte :

' Has made the ancient torrent moan
Although its very source be dry.'

A QUOTATION RECOVERED

2nd July 1923. — To-day I received a letter from a
gentleman in Blackpool who had read in my Adventure
of Living, in the chapter on my old nurse, of my
attempt to find the origin of one of her favourite
quotations. Nobody else of the thousands of people

120 THE RIVER OF LIFE

who, I am proud to say, read the book, many of them
very learned in our literature, apparently spotted the
author ; but my Blackpool correspondent has. The
lines are to be found in an epigram by Mallet, the
eighteenth -century poet. The poem begins with an
account, I think borrowed from Prior, of the squirrel
in the ' rolling cage,' who, while he runs round, thinks
he is climbing, and then he goes on :

' So fares it with this little peer,
So busy and so bustling here ;
For ever flirting up and down,
And striking round his cage, the town.
A world of nothing in his chat,
Of who said this and who did that ?
With similes that never hit,
Vivacity that has no wit ;
Schemes laid this hour, the next forsaken ;
Advice oft ask'd, but never taken ;
Still whirl' d, by ev'ry rising whim,
From that to this, from her to him ;
And when he hath his circle run,
He ends — just where he first begun.'

That is excellent, though my old nurse, Mrs. Leaker,
was quite right in specially remembering and harping
upon the lines with which she often used to chasten
her charges :

* . . . similes that never hit,
Vivacity that has no wit ;
Schemes laid this hour, the next forsaken ;
Advice oft ask'd, but never taken.'

By the way, it is very curious that Mallet is so
much neglected as a poet. It is hardly too much to
say that he is quite unknown except by the verbal
bomb which Dr. Johnson threw at him. I do not
expect it was justified, but it certainly blew the poor

THE LIFE-URGE 121

man to pieces. Johnson, it will be remembered, said
that Bolingbroke, when he had loaded his atheistical
gun, intended to undermine religious faith, he had
not the courage to fire it. Therefore he hired a
beggarly Scotsman for half a crown to pull the
trigger after his death. Mallet considered as a poet is
interesting for two reasons. One of his earliest poems
is called ' The Excursion.' It is written in blank verse,
and it is quite conceivable, and I think indeed likely,
that Wordsworth had read it. The other interesting
fact about Mallet is that he wrote octosyllabic coup-
lets, the lilt of which reminds one of Scott's narrative
poems. Of course, this point must not be pressed too
far, especially as most of Mallet's octosyllabics are
satirical ; but the following quotation from a poem
called ' A Fragment ' affords justification for what I
have said :

* There plung'd amid the shadows brown,
Imagination lays him down,
Attentive, in his airy mood,

To ev'ry murmur of the wood :
The bee, in yonder flow'ry nook,
The chidings of the headlong brook,
The green leaf shiv'ring in the gale,
The warbling hill, the lowing vale,
The distant woodman's echoing stroke,
The thunder of the falling oak :
From thought to thought in vision led,
He holds high converse with the dead.'

Scott, of course, had ten times more inspiration as
well as ten times more vision, as we see from such
lines as :

* E'en the light harebell raised its head,
Elastic from her airy tread.'

But, all the same, he often is not much above the level
of the lines quoted.

122 THE RIVER OF LIFE

THE GOLDEN TREASURY

Mh July 1923. — The Golden Treasury holds a posi-
tion unequalled by any English anthology or book of
selections from the British poets. If you are going
to travel and feel you must carry your poetry with
you lest the desire for verse should sweep over you in
a wave, you naturally put it in your box, bag, trunk,
suit- case, hold-all, or other receptacle for personal
luggage. The first notice I know of this necessary
book is to be found in one of the letters of Charles
Adams, some time Minister from the United States
of America to the Court of St. James. In the early
'sixties, i.e. on publication, he sent it to his son, then
at the front with his regiment of cavalry. The
cavalryman says he laughed when he opened it, for
it seemed such an odd book for a camp and the field.
8 But, strangely enough, I find that I read it more
than any book I have, and that it is more eagerly
picked up by my friends. It is very pleasant to lie
down in all this dust and heat and to read some
charming little thing of Suckling's and Herrick's.'

I wonder how many thousand Golden Treasuries
went to the trenches in the late war, and this time
not merely in the pockets of officers, but in those also
of privates. It was my good luck to give a copy to a
private, an Old Contemptible, not a public school and
university private. This man, by the way, when he
came into our hospital, asked to borrow a Pope's
Homer, because when at the Dardanelles he had been
so close to the site of Troy. He did not, however,
become a devotee. He liked it, but, as he said, he did
not know the People, so he lost interest, and read
other poets. When he went back to France he took
the Golden Treasury with him, and stuck to it as the

THE JOURNALIST'S FUNCTION 123

most valuable possession he had till he was taken
prisoner in March 1918. Then he had a duplicate
copy forwarded to him.

The Adams letters, by the way, are full of good
things. One I will record here, for it might well have
figured as an example of what Bacon called w Desperate
Sayings.' It is an extract from a letter by Charles
Adams, the Diplomat, quoting Jefferson and dealing
with the Civil War :

' How full of significance is this history, which all of
us are now helping to make ! It is literally the third
and fourth generation which is paying the bitter
penalty for what must now be admitted were the
shortcomings of the original founders of the Union.
It was Jefferson who uttered the warning words : "I
tremble for my country when I reflect that God is
just." Yet even he in his latest years recoiled in equal
terror from the opportunity then presented of applying
at least a corrective to the fatal tendence of that
moment. We have had it all to do at a period when
the dangerous evil had reached the plenitude of its
power and threatened to expand its sway over all.
Practically the task may be said to have been accom-
plished. But at what a penalty to the generations
now alive, and perhaps to their posterity ! '

THE JOURNALIST'S FUNCTION

21st July 1923. — L'Art ne vit que de passion. That
is true of all arts, and Journalism is an art.

It is not true that, as Millet goes on to say, ' on ne
peut pas se passioner de rien.' To do this very thing
is the Journalist's special craft. His business is to
become impassioned on everything and so on nothing.
You cannot say this is impossible . Why ! Mr.
Black, Mr. White, Mr. Grey, and the Editor of the
Dictator do it every week ! It is their special power.

124 THE RIVER OF LIFE

They, of course, generally write on great themes, but,
like the great Journalists they are, they can, if neces-
sary, lead you breathless and flushed with interest
through the Elysian Field of Nothing to the cloud-
capped towers of the City of Nowhere.

In a word, the best Journalist is the man who can
become impassioned on the least provocation. He
can make a cocktail out of a wine-glass of muddy
water and a peppermint tabloid, and serve it iced in
the Sahara.

' ITALIAM PETIMUS '— « WE RE OFF TO ITALY '

At Sea. 7th August 1923. — I am on the deck of a
Dutch passenger steamer of the Nederland Line off
Ushant. My wife and I are on our way to Genoa for
an Italian holiday.

We have just passed a steamer. For me she is the
merest phantasm, no more real than a ship on a
cinema screen. But for our officers and ship's crew
she is as real as ' old Mr. Jones's motor going up the
road.' They know in a moment what she is, where
she has come from, to what port she is going, and
what she is loaded with. It is amazing and, as
Sydney Smith said, utterly incomprehensible. You
see a smudge on the horizon, and then you hear one
of the people on your deck remark pensively, as if he
were reading something out of the Stores' catalogue,
' The Royal Edward out of Bristol with tallow and
cork matting. Too high out of the water, like all the
boats James and Jumper built till the Juno gave 'em
a lesson at Singapore.' When you say with a gulp in
your voice, ' Were the passengers saved ? ' he answers
airily, ' I don't think I ever heard about that, but it
caused a lot of talk among the designers.' When your
equanimity is recovered and you go on to say, c How

'WE'RE OFF TO ITALY' 125

do you manage to know so much about her ? ' he
simply does not understand what you are driving at,
and adds, ' Oh ! you could never miss a ship with a
waist like that, could you ? ' At that you wildly
change the subject to Porpoises, Cuttle- Fish, and
Sperm Whales. Truly the sea is a world of its own,
and between those who use it and landsmen a great
gulf is fixed. They can be quite civil to each other
and bow nicely, but no more. There may be hands
across the sea, but hands between the landsmen and
seamen, never. All the same, seafaring men are
' dears,' mild and muddle-headed and quite delirious
in their notions about ordinary things. But they
have vision. Did not the Pilot's mate of a Phoenician
Tramp in Xenophon's Economics make a remark
worthy of Captain Cuttle transferred to Paradise ?
When Xenophon was looking over the great trading
ship, he saw the pilot's mate making a minute inspec-
tion of her, and seeing that everything which could
possibly be needful for the service and safety of the
ship was ready and in its place.

' I asked him what he was doing, whereupon he
answered, " I am inspecting, stranger, just consider-
ing," says he, " the way the things are lying aboard
the ship ; in case of accidents, you know, to see if any-
thing is missing, or not lying snug and shipshape.
There is no time left, you know," he added, " when
God makes a tempest in the great deep, to set about
searching for what you want, or to be giving out any-
thing which is not snug and shipshape in its place.
God threatens and chastises sluggards. If only He
destroy not the innocent with the guilty, a man may
be content ; or if He turn and save all hands aboard
that render good service, thanks be to Heaven." So
spoke the pilot's mate; and I, with this carefulness
of stowage still before my eyes, proceed to enforce
my thesis.'

126 THE RIVER OF LIFE

I may add, for it is highly characteristic, that the
thesis which Xenophon proceeded to enforce was
addressed to his unfortunate girl-wife, to whom he
gave lessons in housekeeping when she was a bride.
Of course, Xenophon tells us she was delighted, but
her real view has not been preserved. Anyway, the
Phoenician pilot's mate was a delightful type of sea-
faring man. He talks like some of the best seamen
in Stevenson or Melville. Indeed, the spirit of his
words is worthy of the most humane of the Hebrew
prophets in feeling. It makes one think that History
and the Jews between them must have slandered the
Phoenicians when they represent them as cruel
votaries of human sacrifice in its most horrible form.
Xenophon's kindly ship's officer could never have
passed children through the fire to Baal. He would
have died before he placed the baby on those dreadful
outstretched arms, the arms which gradually relaxed
through the heat of the fire kindled below them, and
so dropped the helpless victim into the flames.

AT SEA OFF THE COAST OF PORTUGAL

10th August 1923. — Last night the curtain was rung
down on the floating Hotel de (Demi) Luxe and we
had a peep, a very small one, but still a peep, into the
realities of life at sea. We ran into a thick sea-fog.
It was half-past twelve : when, as Racine says in his
large way, c tous dorment ' — the passengers, half of
the crew, ' et Neptune,' ' et l'armee,' for so I take
leave to call the Malay boys who wait on us. Every-
body woke up at once at the ominous, forlorn, yet
' determined to be saved,' once-a-minute howl of the
siren. It was a thoroughly Dutch siren. It made
no attempt to be ' soul music ' or music of any kind.
It was just a metallic howl — ' I am stout, and strong,

AT SEA OFF THE COAST OF PORTUGAL 127

and very heavy, and if you bump into me, you '11
suffer worse than I shall. So keep out of my way
and be damned to you. If you get across my bow
and I ram you, you '11 not forget it ; you '11 crumple
up unless you 're the Leviathan, which you can't be
in these waters. I 'm hove to and offer a good deal
of resistance, as the world has always found when it
has tried to kick the stern-end of the heavy-bottomed
Hollander.' That once-a-minute shout was at first
melodramatic. It was menacing when the engines
stopped and we lay drifting, a temporary derelict on
one of the great pathways of Ocean, the Regent Street
of the Northern Atlantic. Later it grew monotonous
and even foolish, like the drivel of an old-fashioned
watchman : ' Past midnight and a dark and stormy
night, and God save us all.' After an hour or two
of it, interspersed with an occasional thirty seconds'
' cat-nap,' the thing becomes a nightmare. We forgot
the old naval friend who said, ' The sea on a good
liner is now far safer than the land — except, of course,
in a fog ; then anything may happen. A man who
says he feels no fear in a fog is a fool, or a liar, or
both. It 's the half-hour before the operation and
the surgeon has telephoned that he may be obliged
to be a little late.' We curse the siren, and are willing
to take any risks if it will only be quiet. And then
out of one of the silent squares of the chequer- board
of the night, out of the vague, aimless, useless spaces
of the dark, there comes a new voice. Near, yet
distant, far-away, and yet somehow quite close at
hand, there is suddenly sounding in our ears the
heart-cry of another vessel. We are no more alone
on a wide, wide sea, but in company — it may be quite
close company — with some other puzzled unhappy
wanderer of the mist. But there is no consolation in
that fateful and desolate companionship. With

128 THE RIVER OF LIFE

sharers of our bewilderment and disquiet we have
not one pang the less, but a revelation of our alliance
in utter helplessness. We feel like the troop of blind
men in Maeterlinck's Les Aveugles who have lost their
guides in some miserable, ghoulish, delirious picnic in
a forest. When they run into each other, as they do
in their panic, they feel their mad wretchedness a
thousand times increased. They cannot even pre-
tend that they are dreaming, or dead, or just waiting
till their attendants find them and take them home.
And so the sirens bleat and bellow at each other to
keep up their spirits, and fail hopelessly in the
attempt. And we, we lie in our beds and pretend not
to mind. And in one sense we do not mind. We
know that in all probability nothing will happen.
There will be no crash, no shivering from stem to
stern, no shouted orders, no shrill cries of agony and
fear, no gallop of hurrying feet overhead, no list to
port or starboard, no inrush of water, at first a tiny
dribble, next a rippling brook, and then a fierce
torrent. A little wind will get up, the fog will lift,
we shall see a big steamer ' comparatively close,' and
while we and the other vessel are chattering at each
other with signals like two angry and terrified
monkeys, our screw will begin to revolve and we to
sleep. Next morning on our way to breakfast we
shall see spread before us the vast empty spaces of
Ocean — maybe without a sign of life except ourselves,
a mendicant sea-gull, and a porpoise ! As we eat our
toast and marmalade we shall wonder how we came
to indulge in tragic thoughts, quite out of place in a
Marine Hotel complete with gymnasium, hot sea
baths, and a band. Sic transit melancholia maris is
the epitaph I choose, but I hear a fellow-passenger
saying that the Purser told the man in the next cabin
when he changed a cheque that the Captain said that

THE CHANCES OF THE NIGHT 129

they, the other ship, had no right to be where they
were. ' They were right across our bows, off their
own course and on what they must have known to be
ours. They do it to save coal. It ought to be
stopped. It 's a real scandal, and proves how useless
the League of Nations is. I 'd fine them ten shillings
a ton if I had the power, and then fogs wouldn't be
the anxiety they now are to skippers. Last August
I never left the bridge for two days and nights, and
only slept for an hour when it lifted a little. These
Tramp Steamers are the curse of the Ocean. Let alone
the way they let down freights.' I do not suppose for
a moment that the Captain used this language, or
anything like it. It stands here as a modern example
of the art so much employed by Livy and other
classical historians, the art of concocting speeches on
the guesswork principle. No effort is made to report.
You simply put down what you think a ship's captain
would say in certain circumstances.

THE CHANCES OF THE NIGHT

11th August 1923. — To-day I talked with a young
Dutch merchant bound for Java, who gave a most
sensational version of what actually happened on the
night of the fog. While I lay in my bed with a
pleasant, even luxurious, sense of a strictly moderate
danger, listened to our siren, and waited for and heard
the other melancholy and wistful sounds of the night,
my Dutch acquaintance went on deck to see for him-
self. He found the fog so thick that he could hardly
see more than a few yards of deck round the electric
lights. But the Captain was evidently leaving no
risk uncovered. The crews were already standing
to their boats on the two boat decks, and the stores
and water had been put into them. Accordingly he

130 THE RIVER OF LIFE

went down to his cabin, got his wife and children
dressed and their lifebelts ready — we had tried them
on and paraded in them at Boat Drill the day before —
and so faced the chances of the night. He behaved,
in fact, like a true Dutchman. The race is brave and
energetic, but methodical and persistent. Above all,
it is not inclined to run avoidable risks. No doubt
this can be overdone, but so also can the fatalistic
instinct of the Oriental or the sporting attitude of the
Englishman. If everybody had done what my Dutch-
man did, i.e. got perfectly ready to do the right thing
to meet the threatened danger, the danger, if it had
actually pounced, could have been much more easily
dealt with than with nothing ready but all to do.
There would have been no confusion and no waste
of time. No one would have been just too late. The
water, in all probability, would not have come in too
quickly to allow the stores to be put into the boats.
Ten minutes last a good time when every one is ready
for them.

It would seem, then, that the danger had been
greater than I originally thought.

THE OFFICIAL VIEW OF OUR FOG PERIL

11th August. — There is something irritating in the
way in which neutral-tint or dull grey appears to be
the natural colour in which to paint all human inci-
dents. This evening I talked with yet another Dutch
passenger — a person of consequence with a perfect
knowledge of English. He was later described to me
as a kind of Batavian Lord Lieutenant, or Prefect of
a Department. He shook his head, as an accom-
plished man of the world always does on such occa-
sions, at the idea of there ever having been the slightest
danger of a collision. In the first place, when the

OFFICIAL VIEW OF OUR FOG PERIL 131

other steamer was supposed to have crossed our bows
so closely, our ship had already begun to reverse her
engines and was steadily going astern. Therefore it
did not matter who crossed her bows. At such a
moment her aggressive end was the stern end. Be-
sides, sensational things of the kind rumoured were
not likely to happen on Dutch boats, which are very
carefully looked after. Finally, there was a Dutch
naval officer on the bridge the whole time, and he said
that there was never a moment's real risk of any sort
or kind. Here, then, was the sealed-pattern official
view. What is one to believe ? On the whole, I am
now inclined to go back to my first view. The incident
looked a little nasty at one time, but probably it was
not as bad as it seemed, or as it might have been and
would have been if we had not been so doggedly
cautious.

If the surgeon's hand were to slip in the middle of
an operation, there would probably be a regrettable
incident. But it is arranged not to slip, and does not
slip unless a zero, against which there are a thousand
chances to one, happens to turn up. If you have a
good head, you don't call walking along a ridge
eighteen inches broad dangerous. Reasonable care
turns the danger into safety.

So ends the tale of a Fog ! But why Sirens ? How
did the ear-flaying fog-horn get called after the ladies
of the rocks who sang so sweet a song to Ulysses — the
song that was so nearly too much for that cautious old
Mediterranean sailor ? The Steamship Companies'
Sirens are the limit in the matter of non-allurement.
But perhaps, in truth, so also were those of the
Greeks. The fact is the Greeks were born journalists
and could get c copy ' and write up a good story out
of anything. But we need not assume that their
account of the Sirens' lyric cry was on oath.

132 THE RIVER OF LIFE

SIX HOURS LATER

11th August 1923. — I will own to being quite super-
stitious enough to have hastily begun this second entry
so that the preceding digression should, at any rate,
not be my last. I do not, of course, believe that I can
put a spoke into the wheels of Fate. Still, I somehow
like to feel that no one will be able to edit portions of
my Diary and say in the preface that there is a curious
circumstance connected with it which is worth putting
on record. ' The last words in the MS. read strangely
like a premonition of the writer's demise, etc., etc'
I have made it quite impossible for any busybody to
write like that. This thought of scoring off the
Editor of my remains has given me quite an appetite
for dinner in spite of the heat (about 85° Fahr.), and
I feel I have at any rate taken the first trick in the
game I am playing with the Adamantine Destinies.
Besides, 6 Who knows that the world will not end
to-night ? ' as Browning asks with a somewhat un-
necessary vehemence. If so, I shall have got my
trumps in before it was too late. But probably I
shall reach Algiers at eight to-morrow morning, go on
an excursion on shore, get back to the ship, and two
days later reach Genoa. So passes the shadow on the
Dial.

ARISTOTLE THE LITTLE

12th August 1923. — A sense of gloom has possessed
me all day. To be frank, I have had a bitter blow.
Beau Brummell announced that he was disappointed
in the Prince Regent. I have had a much worse
shock. I have been disappointed in Aristotle. I
doubt not that a disillusioned Dandy feels a pang as
great as when the Editor is confuted. Still my loss

ARISTOTLE THE LITTLE 183

is worse because I was so completely surprised, and
because, unlike Beau Brummell, I had everything to
make me think that there could be no mistake about
the Stagirite. The universal opinion of mankind at
all times and in all places, supplemented by a number
of telling quotations, often uncanny in their exact
adaptability to modern needs, and in their clarity,
neatness, and cleverness, had induced me to regard
Aristotle throughout my past life with something
approaching idolatry. I knew he was hard and
practical and matter-of-fact compared to my first
love among the philosophers, the divine Socrates,
but I always imagined that for the gimlet-minded
men of places like Cambridge he shone a bright par-
ticular star that nothing could cloud or dim. In a
word, I thought him supreme and unchallenged in his
own place, though I was perhaps a little hazy as to
what that place was.

So with a kind of patronising homage I packed
Jowett's translation of the Politics, to be one of my
deck books from Southampton to Genoa, or, at any
rate, as far as Algiers. I imagined myself calling up
that astute mind and finding all the phenomena of
politics stated and analysed for me with a French
precision and pellucidness.

Instead, I found myself plunged into the lecture
note-book of a Don, and not even of a super-Don. The
writer appears to have put together with an un-
pardonable haste and irrelevance a course of lectures
on ' The State,' fit perhaps for a set of Pass-men in
their last term, but for no one else. Such insipid,
superficial, unscientific pieces of commonplace, con-
ventional analysis I have never come across before.
Categories that are ill-arranged and unexhaustive,
postulates that beg all the questions that they are
supposed to solve and elucidate ; definitions that are

134 THE RIVER OF LIFE

the merest repetitions — c Dog, an animal of the canine
tribe ' ; explanations that darken the subject, assump-
tions that challenge instant contradictions, ' platitudes
that nauseate,' truisms that distort, are all muddled
together with a pompous air of certainty which irri-
tates and disgusts. That is the kind of thing that
meets one in page after page of the Politics. c Of
States there are eight kinds ' ; ' Constitutions can be
divided under five principal heads ' ; and so on and
so on, till the mind grows atrophied and one sighs for
the wizard touch of Plato or the magnificent and
imaginative conceptions of the pre-Socratics.

When Aristotle gives up his gimcrack analysis and
descends to aphorisms and didactic judgments, he
is still more repulsive. Indeed, in one's first angry
bewilderment and indignation at his paltry self-
sufficiency and pedantic assurance, one fancies one is
hearing the pompous jabber of a self-important
Sunday School ' Professor ' in some multi-millionaire's
' home town ' in the Middle West. The Church Insti-
tute in the ground floor of that flamboyant unclassable
structure in far-away happy Zenith (provided by the
said multi-millionaire) rises before me as I write.
Aristotle would have got the job ten times over in an
international competition open to all creeds and races
as arranged for by the ' Cuttle-fish ' Trust. If Dr.
Smiles had also run, he would have been nowhere.
Again and again one is amazed to find that Aristotle
is not ashamed to talk as he does of ' Rich ' and
' Poor,' and use other vague, weak, unstable terms as
he does without any attempt at limitation or definition.

Even when he is driven by the force of circumstances
to define, he is often paltry in the extreme. Take for
example his ramshackle conception of Sovereignty in
the State. It is a wretched performance. The Grand
Vizier in Racine's Bajazet beats it hollow. When he

ARISTOTLE THE LITTLE 135

does say something good, as is, of course, often the
case, for the man was a genius, it is, in the Politics,
generally put in such a twaddly way that one's
stomach is turned.

6 Of oligarchies, one form is that in which the
majority of the citizens have some property, but not
very much ; and this is the first form which allows to
any one who obtains the required amount the right
of sharing in the government. The sharers in^the
government being a numerous body, it follows that
the law must govern, and not individuals. For in
proportion as they are further removed from a
monarchical form of government, and in respect of
property have neither so much as to be able to live
without attending to business, nor so little as to need
state support, they must admit the rule of law and
not claim to rule themselves. But if the men of pro-
perty in the state are fewer than in the former case,
and own more property, there arises a second form of
oligarchy. For the stronger they are, the more power
they claim, and, having this object in view, they
themselves select those of the other classes who are to
be admitted to the government; but, not being as
yet strong enough to rule without the law, they make
the law represent their wishes. When this power is
intensified by a further diminution of their numbers
and increase of their property, there arises a third and
further stage of oligarchy, in which the governing class
keep the offices in their own hands, and the law ordains
that the son shall succeed the father. When, again,
the rulers have great wealth and numerous friends,
this sort of dynastic or family despotism approaches
a monarchy ; individuals rule and not the law. This
is the fourth sort of oligarchy, and is analogous to the
last sort of democracy.

There are still two forms besides democracy and
oligarchy ; one of them is universally recognized and
included among the four principal forms of govern-
ment, which are said to be (1) monarchy, (2) oligarchy,

136 THE RIVER OF LIFE

(3) democracy, and (4) the so-called aristocracy or
government of the best. But there is also a fifth,
which retains the generic name of polity or constitu-
tional government ; this is not common, and therefore
has not been noticed by writers who attempt to
enumerate the different kinds of government ; like
Plato in his books about the state, they recognize
four only.'

That is a fair example of Aristotelian political analysis.
What he says about Slavery is not merely twaddle.
It is evil, poisonous stuff. Aristotle seems to think
that people are slaves because they are not fit to be
anything else. That freemen become slaves if they
are unsuccessful in wars which are not their fault
rather worries him, but he muddles along with a con-
ception of, and apology for, slavery which might hold
water in the case of black slaves, but is obvious rubbish
in the case of Greek slavery. It is a mere lame and
disingenuous attempt to excuse something per se
inexcusable, though something which he personally
was most anxious to excuse. In the end he stoops to
hint that slavery is necessary to support the very
highest type of civilization — a remark which has done
a great deal of harm and misled many weak and selfish
minds. Slavery is the ruin of civilization, even when
the slaves belong to an inferior race. When the slaves
are of the same type of flesh and blood as their masters,
it is so horrible that one feels that no decent man could
tolerate it. In such a view I, at any rate, have the
support of Socrates. When he discusses ' the Institu-
tion ' he makes no sophistical Aristotelian defence,
but shows evident signs of abhorrence.

SPENSER AND THE WHALE 137

SPENSER AND THE WHALE

At Sea. ISth August 1923. — This morning we saw
whales. Where did Spenser see them, I wonder?
He must have seen them with his own eyes, or else
he would hardly have talked about ' sea- shouldering
whales.' Spenser was no doubt a great poet. He
must have been. I don't take things on trust, especi-
ally poets. It is too serious a matter ; but a man who
can give that epithet to the whale is clearly a past-
master in his craft. Besides, there stands that immortal
opening in the Eighth Canto of Book n., ' And is there
Care in Heaven and is there Love ? ' I hope I have
quoted properly, but alas ! the official of the Dutch
Company who chose the English books in our ship's
library was — well, let us say, a little limited in vision.
He knew Mrs. E. Glyn and several other novelists of
punch and promise, ' But ah ! of our poor Ned he
never heard and we should tease him with our plaint
in vain.' I know that if I wrote and complained, I
should, no doubt, get a polite letter from Amsterdam
in faultless English saying that he had to consider
the general taste of ' normal passengers ' — a shrewd
hit that, at me — and that though the claims of the
author I had mentioned would be laid before the
Table- Stores, Entertainments and Pleasures Com-
mittee of the Board of Directors, he feared that they
would hardly feel justified in making any change.
A Mr. Shaw (British Dramatist, classed A 1 at Amster-
dam University) had at one time been represented by
a volume, but as it remained unread for four voyages,
according to the report of the Library Steward, it was
withdrawn for a novel entitled What price Julia?
by a more recent author.

Yet Spenser was great, if somehow a failure. In

138 THE RIVER OF LIFE

the first place, he was the leader of the first, if prema-
ture, Gothic and Romantic Revival. The ashes of the
fires that destroyed the abbeys were hardly cold. The
Renaissance was in its eager, passionate youth. In
Poetry, in Prose, in Painting, in Architecture, on the
Stage, and in the streets, in the monuments of the
dead, as in the language of the living, you saw nothing
but the Classic touch. The Ionic, the Corinthian, the
Doric, the Composite Orders revelled and rioted
through the land. No poet or prose writer was com-
plete without a Latinized or Hellenized vocabulary.
Greene and Marlowe were quite as irresponsive to
Mediaevalism as Pope or as Dryden. Yet in the midst
of this apparently complete triumph, one in which the
other side has become as if it had never been, Spenser
led the first counter-attack of the Romantics and sent
his gallant and gentle knight pricking across the plain.

It was splendid, but it was too early, and so Spenser
remains the Poets' poet, which is a polite way of saying
nobody's poet. And yet he might have been any-
thing. For example, he had in him the seeds of a
supreme form of satire. The passage describing the
sorrows of the suitor for Court favour is as poignant
as anything in literature. It is bursting with passion.
I shall quote it, though I have been warned by my
terrestrial Votaress, or rather by several of them of
both sexes, that this Diary will be ruined if I indulge
in a licentious use of the quotation habit. ' The world
is tired of irrelevant rhetoric, especially when rhymed,'
says one. ' Cut them all out,' adds another, ' and you
may yet save the book and secure it quite a success in
its own way.'

Well, I won't. I am writing this Diary to please
myself and not a hypothetical reader that I have
never seen, never shall see, and, if he is what my
friends paint him, that I never want to see. I admit I

SPENSER AND THE WHALE 139

agreed to print this Diary to please my publisher, most
sympathetic of men, and also one of the most indul-
gent— as indulgent as a great doctor who thinks you
are probably pretty bad, but believes so little in
medicine that he is not going to worry you or himself
or any one else about it. ' It is all too uncertain for
me to risk making a martyr out of a patient.' But if
I began to please some one else, I am going on to please
myself. I feel exactly like John Gilpin when he
addressed his horse :

' 'Twas for your pleasure I came here.
You shall go back for mine.'

And so I shall write of Whales, and Poets, and Goths,
and Doctors, and Ships' Captains, and all the rest of it
when and how I like. So here is the example of
Spenser as a non-Romantic, Renaissance, Elizabethan
satirist :

* To lose good days that might be better spent,
To waste long nights in pensive discontent,
To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow,
To feed on hope, to pine with fear and sorrow,
To have thy Princes grace, yet want her Peeres,
To have thy asking, yet wait many years,
To fret thy soul with crosses and with cares,
To eat thy heart through comfortless despairs,
To fawne, to crouche, to wait, to ride, to run,
To spend, to give, to want, to be undone.'

(Mother Hubbard's Tale.)

What a digression from Whales through Spenser to
the Romantic Revival and satire ! The River of Life
is running with a vengeance. Is it perhaps nearing
the rapids ? Does it mean a real collision to-night
and a wire from Reuter's Agency describing the
catastrophe ' off Algiers,' ending ' Unfortunately
Mr. Strachey, the well-known journalist, was not

140 THE RIVER OF LIFE

among the passengers saved. He, or his body, may
still be discovered among the floating wreckage, but it
is not thought probable, though no doubt a thorough
search will be organized by the representatives of the
Company.'

GENOA THE SUPERB

lteh August 1923. At Sea, off the Port of Genoa. —
It is early morning, about six, and we are just entering
the harbour of Genoa. There is no approach to any
city that I have ever seen which can compare with
that of Genoa ; — unless, indeed, it is New York. That
is no doubt the most tremendous and amazing landfall
on the face of the globe. But while it fascinates, it is
in a sense intolerable, which Genoa could never be.
She holds the golden mean between grandeur and a
happy charm. The scene in that deep-blue Mediter-
ranean bay is set for a glorious festa, for delight, for
pleasure, for satisfaction. It was the Titans who
designed the sea-front of Manhattan, or else some
Spirit of uneasy mind — like the Jinn who for his
restlessness and uncontrollableness of heart was sealed
up in the bottle and buried under the waves. There
is nothing exactly sinister, or gloomy, or infernal
about New York ; but it is adamantine, strenuous,
athletic, and there is in it always the note of Terribilitd.
It invites you to the Arena of Life, to the dust and
sweat and agony of those who contend in the Palaestra
of human effort. Genoa, the gracious Lady of the
Waters, asks you to lay your hand in hers and she will
show you all the glories of the earth and sky. The blue
waves laugh before her throne and, as they sparkle in
the sun's ardent beams, sing her praises. Behind her
are the purple, grey Apennines. Like faded violets
in hue they barricade the horizon, and up their foot-

GENOA THE SUPERB 141

hills climb the giant houses of the city just as did
those of Tyre. It is magnificent, superb — Genoa's
own epithet time out of mind — grandiose, full of
pomp and splendour, yet never oppressive, never out
of proportion, never out of scale, never wild, or
eccentric, or capable of awakening the spirit of con-
tempt. Genoa supports grandly the sovereign word
of interpretation for all Italy — the word fit to be
written over every gate of land or sea by which you
enter the enchanted and enchanting land, but most of
all over that of her whom all the world acclaims as
La Superba. That word is Magnanimity, Great-
heartedness. Italy is the place of the great-souled, of
the noble, of the ingenuous, the undefeated, the un-
dismayed. Italy has always saved herself and will
continue to save herself by this quality. She cannot
be mean, or petty, or ignoble even in rags or distress.
In pain and in sorrow, in tumult and in poverty, in
disorder of mind and body, she has always kept her
dignity of demeanour. The Italian always aspires
not only to do great things, but to do them in the
great way, whether it be to build a church, a hospital,
or a railway station, paint a picture, or write an ode.
Gentle endeavour and the refinement of miniature work
— these appeal to him very little. He wants the big
brush, the big canvas. What Sir Thomas Browne so
well called ' the wild enormities of ancient magna-
nimity ' inspire no fears in his mind. The grandiose
does not alarm him, but only the little and the sordid.
This great-heartedness is shown very clearly not
only in Italian manners, which have always been the
most stately and full-sweeping in the world, but in
the Italian titles and the Italian language. For
example, the great officials of Venice were content
with no less a title than that of ' Magnifico,' and it is
from the Italian lingua franca of the Levant that we

142 THE RIVER OF LIFE

get such formulas as the ' Grand Seigneur ' and the
8 Sublime Porte.' It is, however, in architecture,
which is essentially the Italian art, that the magna-
nimity of the Italian is clearest. Nothing is too big,
or bold, or splendid for the Italians to attempt in
stone or in brick. Where ordinary mortals build a
shed, the Italians rear a palace. The sightseer who
wanders to the back of St. Peter's in order to get a
side-view of how Michael Angelo hung the Pantheon
in heaven, will realize what I mean, provided he looks
down into the huge foundations of St. Peter's. There
he will see displayed a sort of giant's version of a
London area. The foundations seize the earth in a
kind of titanic grasp which makes one feel, to quote
Sir Thomas Browne once more, that c man is a noble
animal.' Rome, indeed, is full of Italian magnanimity
in stone. St. Peter's and the Vatican are no excep-
tions, but simply examples. The Coliseum and the
Pantheon stand to show that the ancient Roman
masons and architects were never content unless they
could ' lick creation.' The modern Italian is quite as
determined to do his bit greatly. When the Italians
entered Rome in 1870 they were as a nation exceed-
ingly hard-up. They had the biggest debt per head
in Europe, they had a greatly depreciated paper
currency, and the Italian people were groaning under
the heaviest load of taxation in Europe. All this,
one might suppose, would have made the Government
keep off expensive bricks and mortar in a city already
filled with glorious buildings, a city which needed no
adornment from modern hands. Not a bit of it !
The first thing that the Italian Government did was
to build the biggest Treasury in the world — to match,
said cynical critics, the biggest national indebtedness.
It is true that they only built in brick and stucco,
and in a style of architecture which can hardly be

GENOA THE SUPERB 143

called satisfactory — that of the Third Empire. Never-
theless, up went a building which by a foot or two
beats the Vatican itself for size, and must be admitted
to be a potent and sound piece of work in spite of its
obvious faults.

Perhaps one of the most complete examples of the
passion for great-hearted buildings in Italy is afforded
by the little city of Parma. Parma was never a great
State, nor had it ever great rulers or great artists,
except Correggio. Yet the people of Parma were
always at it with the trowel and chisel. The brick
arcades of Parma's sixteenth- century palace made
me uncover my head and bend my knee to the shades
of their noble creators. The brickwork here can only
be described as glorious. But Parma (like every
other Italian town) at some one special point strives
to reach the architectural limit. In this case it is the
theatre — a theatre built for a royal marriage, but a
theatre which holds four thousand people. It is true
that a great many of the adornments are pasteboard.
You see huge statues which look very well from the
pit or stalls or their equivalents, but which, when you
get up close, are only a quarter of an inch thick.
Half the balustrades and architectural features, indeed,
are either pasteboard or painted in chiaroscuro on lath-
and-plaster backgrounds. For all that, the building
is in conception magnificent.

When Napoleon's Marie Louise went to live in
Parma, one would have thought the authorities would
have had no difficulty in housing her in the old palace.
But that would not do at all. They built for her the
very coquettish, but also very large, ' Neo-Grec/
palazzo — now, if I remember rightly, the home of the
Prefect. Near this palace is a church of about 1730
or so, which, though it has no particular architectural
raison d'etre, is quite splendid in its proportions.

144 THE RIVER OF LIFE

Outside Parma also there happens to be a large fort,
but without any special history or importance. Yet
any historian whose mind is attuned to understand
bricks and mortar might deduce from it the whole
spirit of the Italian people. The gates and ditches,
ravelins, curtains, and horn-works, as Uncle Toby
would say, all breathe forth magnanimity.

15th August. — Perhaps it may be urged that I was
overdoing my point when yesterday I wrote of Italian
magnanimity in architecture, and I shall be told that
the small towns of Italy have grandiose buildings
only because Italy was broken up into small States.
My answer is that you can take plenty of minute
towns in Italy which were never anything but pro-
vincial towns (towns which were never independent
communities or owned a tyrant of their own) in which
great-heartedness is just as apparent in their buildings
as in the local capitals. Take Novara. Novara is a
town of twenty- five thousand inhabitants. Its name
is known to the world outside Italy only because of
the battle of 1849, in which the Piedmontese were
defeated by the Austrians. Baedeker tells us that
1 it abounds in monuments.' It certainly does. The
church of San Gaudenzio, erected in 1577, has a
dome only short by thirty- six inches of four hundred
feet in height. St. Paul's is four hundred and four
feet high from the ground to the top of the cross.
The Cathedral, which was rebuilt in 1831, is a piece
of portentous academic ' Neo-Grec ' which literally
takes away the ordinary traveller's breath, so appalling
is it in size, clammy magnificence, and pedantic dull-
ness. Looking back upon a hasty visit, the present
diarist wonders whether, after all, it really exists,
and whether what he thinks he saw was not an archi-
tectural nightmare inspired by some dim remembrance

GENOA THE SUPERB 145

of Martin's illustrations to Paradise Lost. It would
indeed be something in the nature of a relief if some-
body who knows Novara would write and tell me that
there is no such building.

Everything in Novara is on a colossal scale, and yet
the town has, as I have said, only twenty-five thousand
inhabitants, and never had more. It was never a
capital of a State, or even the head town of some great
Fief. Think of it. Let any Englishman recall the
English towns he knows of twenty-five thousand in-
habitants and the kind of architecture they possess 1
I am not now talking, remember, of the beauties of
architecture, but of magnanimity of size and grandeur,
even of the grandiose in conception. While the people
of an Italian town of twenty-five thousand inhabitants
would never be content to build except on the grand
scale, an English town of the same size revels in a kind
of architectural squalor, or at best produces some tiny
little ' refinement ' in stone or brick.

Amazing as is the example of Novara, that of
Chiavari — a fascinating little town on the Ligurian
coast, half-way between Genoa and Spezia — is even
more soul- shaking. Chiavari has some thousand
inhabitants. The streets, old and new, are arcaded
in the most delighfully picturesque manner, often
with pointed arches. The principal church, Santa
Madonna del Orto (1613), now a Cathedral, is a
spacious and dull classical building on a large scale.
But that, again, is not what concerns us. What does
concern us in this context is the huge portico of
Carrara marble Corinthian columns, as big almost as
those in the Parthenon, which was clapped on to the
church in a sort of constructional frenzy, without the
slightest sense of architectural fitness, in the year 1835.
Remember what Italy was, or rather the little state
of Piedmont, to which Chiavari then belonged, in the

146 THE RIVER OF LIFE

'thirties. Italy, socially, politically, and economic-
ally, touched bottom in those deadly years. Yet lo
and behold ! a group of pious and, we must suppose,
well-to-do gentlemen in this little coast town, with
about a mile of foreshore and for hinterland a valley
a quarter of a mile broad running inland for about
three miles, and then the mountains rising literally
like a stone wall, agreed that they would like to fit
a white marble portico to their church with monolithic
marble columns forty feet high. Why should not
Chiavari do herself as well as Athens in the way of
porticoes ? Why not indeed ? What in those days
would have dumbfounded a city like London or Liver-
pool or Manchester does not seem to have made the
Chiavari people turn a hair. The church appeared to
them to want a portico, or rather they wanted an
architectural ' jolly ' in good, hard, bright marble and
sound mortar, and so great and stout of heart were
they that it did not occur to them to have anything
less than a portico equal to the greatest in the world.
If it did not quite fit the church, so much the worse for
the church. The portico was not going to suffer, said
the good men and true of 1835, because of an inade-
quate Duomo. We picture them rushing at the design
like mad bulls. ' Down with the craven who said
forty- five feet was too high or six columns too many !
We are not out to build a pigsty.' Accordingly up
went the columns, and there stands the portico glued
on the church, just as a child might glue a new toy
on to an old one. No doubt the townsmen of Chiavari
intended some day or other to bring their already big
cathedral up to date, and case its brick and stucco
walls in Carrara marbles to match the portico.
Instead, however, they have deviated into material-
ism, and build Frenchified boulevards with enormous
colonnades, very ugly, but very grandiose. The

ITALY THE DIVINE 147

portico therefore still sticks out, with a ragged edge,
about ten feet beyond the Cathedral walls. No
matter ; Chiavari has got a portico which will warm
the heart of any architectural enthusiast, and make
him feel what noble creatures were the burgesses of
1835. Once more remember what 1835 was in
Europe, and the kind of stuff that was put up in
England, or even in France, at that epoch, and then
look and wonder at the portico of Chiavari. ' The
large portico added in 1835 ' is all that the bewildered
Baedeker can find breath to say of it. He had to
leave it at that. You want to know something of
the soul of Italy and her blood- stirring devotion to
stone and brick, and construction for the sake of
construction, to understand 6 the large portico added
in 1835.' It contains the secret of Italy, old and ever
young. But what normal German ever really under-
stood the heart of anything ? The German mind
moves on the surface, and is simply puzzled by the
things unseen.

Let no one imagine from what I have written above
that I think Italy is only magnanimous in stone and
great-hearted in bricks and mortar. In the things of
the spirit she is of royal mood.

ITALY THE DIVINE. SACRI MONTI

15^ August 1923. — While I am dealing with things
Italian and offering a kind of bidding-prayer in grati-
tude for her gifts of beauty and peace of heart, I must
not forget her Sacri Monti. For there I am specially
bidden to pray and offer thanks : c And herein for Orta,
Varallo, and Varese, benefactors of the human race.'
But first I must describe and explain, for I expect that
to many people a Sacro Monte means nothing. The
foothills of the Italian Alps possess a form of national

148 THE RIVER OF LIFE

monument conspicuous for beauty even in the land
which possesses beauty as a dower — the Sacro Monte,
or Holy Hill. The Sacro Monte is some comparatively
low isolated hill or spur of mountain, set as a rule in
view of the spacious plain of Piedmont on the one
side and of the Alpine range on the other, dedicated,
through the medium of the figurative arts, to religious
uses and religious memories. The Italians of Pied-
mont, fired with that passion for decorating the world
which possessed all Italy in the past and still inspires
her, were not content to construct spacious cathedrals
and churches, and every other type of building
majestic and delicate, to carve or cast glorious statues,
or to set men's hearts ablaze with the painter's brush
on canvas or on the plastered wall. These people of
the hills devised a scheme by which, in the most
exquisite of natural surroundings, the arts of the
sculptor, of the painter, of the landscape gardener,
and even of the groupers and marshallers of the stage,
should each and all be called on to contribute to c the
glory of God ' and the beautifying of a noble country-
side. In the Sacro Monte every form of art is em-
ployed, and yet all are subordinated to form one perfect
whole. The spirit of the Italian is never, like that of
the Northerner, satisfied with a piece of beautiful work
in isolation. He yearns for, and searches to set forth,
an ordered and balanced composition.

The men who designed the Sacri Monti of Piedmont
had the vault of Heaven for the theatre in which to
set their scenes. I will take the Sacro Monte at Orta
as an example of which I am writing about. It is not
as great or as magnificent, from the point of view of
sculpture, painting, or architecture, as that of Varallo,
but it is more easily described. On a spur of the hills
overlooking an exquisite mountain lake the builders
of the Sacro Monte presented their offering to God.

ITALY THE DIVINE 149

They carved out of their native woodlands a scheme
of green and winding glades overshadowed by tall
chestnuts and stately pines and beeches — never too
many or too few, but exhibiting the happiest mixture
of Nature and of Art. And always between leaves
and branches, even in the height of summer, the
pilgrims of the hill catch glimpses of the blue lake and
its island town, or of the bluer sky and the widespread
plain. Through this hill park wander broad and
sinuous roads, or wide paths, sometimes wholly of
grass, and sometimes of stone. The stone-pitched
paths have those broad, shallow steps which decorate
all the hills of Italy, whether in the Alps or Apennines
— a heritage from the Roman roadmakers. Bordering
these roads are set, with an artful innocence of design
that defies analysis, a series of exquisite Chapels built
in mountain stone and hard plaster. The Orta
Chapels are the perfection of that garden architecture
which is Italy's singular prerogative. The little
classical buildings which delight one in the back-
grounds of primitive pictures, but which one never
sees in bricks and mortar in the towns, are scattered
with a lavish hand throughout the sylvan solitudes of
the Orta hillside. I can best describe the Orta
Chapels, with the delicate wan Italian grass growing
up to the short slight steps which lead to the little
platforms on which they stand, as a mixture of a
summer-house and a shrine. The Chapels of the
Sacro Monte at Orta are not merely the usual Stations
of the Cross, but illustrate the life of St. Francis of
Assisi, and are inspired by the legend or belief that
the saint went through, in his own person, the various
stages of his Master's life. St. Francis's life story is
not left to men's imaginations. Each Chapel contains
its figurative record, and not, as generally in Italian
shrines, by paintings on the wall, but by groups of

150 THE RIVER OF LIFE

life-sized terracotta figures, moulded and painted, as
if they were dressed in real silks, cottons, and brocades.
The groups are in the foreground, and fade in the
background into fresco work. The arts of the theatre
are here freely employed. Just as in the foreground
of a great stage set one has the real men and women,
and in the sides and background painted cloths, so in
each Chapel of the Sacro Monte the story is told by a
dramatic mechanism. It is like an elaborate stage
scene in a Miracle Play in which all the actors have
suddenly been petrified. Perhaps in the full blaze of
sunlight the effect may sometimes seem a little too
theatrical, a little too much like a giant peepshow.
But as a rule this disillusionment is only momentary,
and while it lasts one has only got to turn one's eyes
to the waving boughs of the chestnut or the beech,
and to the divine garden, which one feels was quite as
much in the minds of those who laid out the Sacro
Monte as were the Chapels and their contents.

But why should North Italy have a monopoly of the
beautiful art which has its manifestation in the Sacro
Monte ? Why should not other hills and other groves
have a like inspiration ? The exquisite dwarf oaks of
the Welsh mountains provide exactly the amount of
woodland required. Beneath their boughs there is no
tangled undergrowth, but the grass is short and sweet,
and the glades are diversified with stately rocks
covered with lichen. Nothing would be easier, with-
out the slightest defacement of Nature, but rather
with its enhancement, than to trace paths, sometimes
flat, sometimes rising in shallow steps, and to place
an ascending series — never formal, yet never hap-
hazard or unmotived — of architectural Shrines or
Chapels.

North Wales is, as I have said already, pictorially
the most beautiful part of the British Islands. The

AN APOLOGY TO ARISTOTLE 151

geological formation of the mountains, the fact that
they rise in so many places so close to the sea, and
something perhaps in the atmosphere, give to the
scenery of North Wales a character for magnificence
in little which is only to be matched in the hills of
Italy. The mountains of North Wales are not merely
beautiful for Britain, but have an exquisiteness
which entitles them to the admiration of the whole
world.

Dr. Johnson, as is recorded by Mrs. Piozzi, when on
his Welsh tour, spoke of a Welsh landlord famous
for his ' vast and sudden improvements.' Will not
some Welsh landlord of wealth, imagination, and
public spirit commission one of our architects to make
him a Sacred Hill in some appropriate spur of oak-
clad mountain ? I know of a dozen places in North
Wales fitted to receive the shrines. Surely there must
be some takers of such a suggestion for winning fame
and the gratitude of all lovers of the beautiful. Our
millionaires think nothing of giving a picture, or a
cabinet, or a Chinese- jar, worth £40,000, to a Museum.
Why not one a Sacro Monte ?

AN APOLOGY TO ARISTOTLE

16th August 1923. — I have been reading over what
I wrote at sea about Aristotle's Politics. I was clearly
in a bad temper. The Politics may, and I think do,
deserve all I said, but not the man. He was a very
great, if a very unsympathetic figure. Politically he
was, no doubt, a reactionary and also a man of state-
craft like Bacon. He was a great observer, like all the
Greeks, but I feel that he observed cities and Govern-
ments, not to find out the best form, but to side-track
popular Government. He wanted receipts for dodging
Democracy and found them with a pitiful ingenuity un-

152 THE RIVER OF LIFE

worthy of a true Philosopher. Note the silly observa-
tions about Agricultural States being fit for Democratic
Institutions because the bulk of the people were busy
with field services. The shepherds and other pastoral-
ists in Agricultural States would not, he slyly noted,
take the trouble to come to the Assemblies and vote,
or sit on Juries, and so they could be safely trusted
with these functions. What a paltry, politic old man !
No doubt such comments were often put into the
mouths of other people, but, even if he turned up his
eyes in pretended protest, we feel that he really
relished what he reprimanded.

All the same, when Aristotle touched Poetry,
Science, Rhetoric, Ethics, or any purely abstract
subject such as Metaphysics, he was divine, or, at any
rate, divinely shrewd and penetrative. In his Bio-
logical writings Aristotle seems to have come extra-
ordinarily near to the latest doctrine of the ' Life-
Urge.' Take, for example, the wonderful sentence :

c We must conclude that man does not owe his
superior intelligence to his hands, but his hands to
his superior intelligence.5

Aristotle may seem a little old-fashioned when he talks
about Nature with a big N, but we have only got to
substitute for ' Nature ' ' the Life-Urge,' and we shall
soon see that Aristotle was thinking along very
modern lines. Here is another illustration of this
fact :

8 It was evident to Aristotle ' — I quote from a sum-
mary by an American writer, Dr. Henry Osborn
Taylor — ' that the nutritive and motor life of soul
could not exist without the body : " Plainly those
principles whose activity is bodily cannot exist with-
out a body, e.g. walking from outside." But the final
problem — " a question of the greatest difficulty," says

AN APOLOGY TO ARISTOTLE 153

Aristotle — is : " When and how and whence is a
share in reason acquired by those animals that partici-
pate in this principle ? " His answer is, that, unlike
the nutritive and motor life, the reason, the rational
soul, alone enters from without and " alone is divine,
for no bodily activity has any connection with the
activity of reason." '

This will no doubt seem crude to many people, but I
should not be surprised if in the end it proves less
crude than the hypothesis of the pure materialists.
The vital principle, the ' Life- Urge,' the soul — call it
what we like — is a fact, and cannot be explained away
or completely accounted for in terms of materialism.
As Dr. Henry Osborn Taylor puts it :

' Biology to-day inclines to hold that no adequate
description of the living organism can be framed in
categories of " matter " and " energy." '

In other words, and as I have already said in verse
in the Diary, at the final audit of ' Man and Co.'s '
activities in the universe we must expect to find what
is called in the balance-sheet of certain great businesses
an ' unassignable ' or 6 unanalysable ' profit. This is
something which does definitely exist, but for which it
is exceedingly puzzling, perhaps impossible, to find
the proper place in the ' Profit and Loss Account.'

In the same way, in chemical analysis there is apt
to be something over — something which undoubtedly
exists but which will not fit in with our existing con-
ceptions and definitions. For a long time the Vita-
mines were ignored in chemical analysis. Now they
are known to exist, though their constituent parts
have not yet been discovered, and possibly may never
be discovered.

In this context I cannot do better than quote the

154 THE RIVER OF LIFE

following admirable summing-up by Dr. Osborn
Taylor in his recent book :

' Phrases change ; and thinking takes a new direc-
tion from the new phrase and seems to flow in untried
channels. The old phrase becomes an alien. Few of
us to-day could bring ourselves to accept eo nomine
the \fruxv — the soul, or, if one will, the organic life in its
ascending scale — as the entelechy, to wit, " the form
or actuality of a natural body having in it the capacity
of life." More specifically the ijjvxv *s the " first
entelechy," or actuality, standing as knowledge stands
to the exercise of knowledge in speculation. This
" soul " is the formative principle of the body and
the body's end or final cause, even as speculative
activity (to Oeupeiv) is the soul's final end. Such
statements are not of our time. Yet, perhaps, they
are not so far from our intellectual purposes. Do we
not think that all the sciences, including those having
to do with organisms, contribute to the soul, which is
life, and indeed the highest life which is of the mind ?
This is the Aristotelian view, and one properly belong-
ing to a man who saw life whole and realized the
splendour of its manifestations, beyond the fields of
science, in art and literature, in tragedy and epic
poetry. The " end " of the body is the human
personality made up not only of its intellectual strain-
ings, but of its nobler impulses and more sublime
emotions, the sense of holiness and beauty and other
unanalysable things of human experience.'

Of all this Aristotle had a wonderful intuition, and
for this quality we may even excuse and forgive the
Politics. Nor was this all. When Aristotle analysed
human nature in a scientific spirit, he had an unrivalled
touch. Consider his contrast between old and young
opinion in his Treatise on Rhetoric. It is a triumph
in dialectical skill, and as true now as when it was
written. In order that the amende honorable by the

AN APOLOGY TO ARISTOTLE 155

Blackbeetle to the Almighty Sage shall be complete,
I will quote it in full :

c The young are in character prone to desire and
ready to carry any desire they may have formed into
action. They are changeful, too, and fickle in their
desires, which are as transitory as they are vehement,
for their wishes are keen without being permanent,
like a sick man's fits of hunger and thirst. They are
passionate, irascible and apt to be carried away by
their impulses. They are the slaves, too, of their
passion, as their ambition prevents their ever brooking
a slight and renders them indignant at the mere idea
of enduring an injury. And while they are fond of
honour, they are fonder still of victory ; for superiority
is the object of youthful desire, and victory is a species
of superiority. Again, they are fonder both of honour
and of victory than of money, the reason why they
care so little for money being that they have never yet
had experience of want. They are charitable rather
than the reverse, as they have never yet been witnesses
of many villainies ; and they are trustful, as they have
not yet been often deceived. They are sanguine, too ;
for the young are heated by Nature as drunken men by
wine ; besides, they have not yet experienced frequent
failures. Their lives are lived principally in hope, as
hope is of the future and memory of the past, and
while the future of youth is long, its past is short ; for
on the first day of life the field of memory is empty,
the field of hope infinite. For the same reason they
are easily deceived, as being quick to hope. They are
inclined to be courageous ; for they are full of passion,
which excludes fear, and of hope, which inspires con-
fidence, as anger is compatible with fear, and the hope
of something good is itself a source of confidence.
They are bashful, too, having as yet no independent
standard of honour and having lived entirely in the
school of convention. They have high aspirations,
for they have never yet been humiliated by the
experience of life, but are unacquainted with the

156 THE RIVER OF LIFE

limiting force of circumstances ; and a great idea of
one's own deserts, such as is characteristic of a
sanguine disposition, is itself a form of high aspira-
tion. Again, in their actions, they prefer honour to
expediency, as it is habit rather than calculation
which controls their lives, and, while calculation pays
regard to expediency, virtue pays regard exclusively
to honour. Youth is the age when people are most
devoted to their friends or relations or companions,
as they are then extremely fond of social intercourse,
and have not yet learnt to judge their friends or
indeed anything else by the rule of expediency. If
the young commit a fault, it is always on the side of
excess, for they carry everything too far, whether it
be their love or hatred or anything else. They regard
themselves as omniscient and are positive in their
assertions ; this is in fact the reason of their carrying
everything too far. Also, their offences take the line
of insolence and not of meanness. They are com-
passionate from supposing all people to be virtuous
or at least better than they really are, for, as they
estimate their neighbours by their own innocence,
they regard the evils which befall them as undeserved.
Finally, they are fond of laughter, and consequently
facetious, facetiousness being disciplined insolence.'

So much for the Young. Now for the father who
begot them :

8 Such being the character of the young, it may be
said generally that elder men who have passed their
prime have characters mostly composed of the quali-
ties opposite to these. For as they have lived many
years and have been often the victims of deception
and error, and as vice is the rule rather than the
exception in human affairs, they are never positive
about anything and always err on the side of too little
excess. They " suppose," and they never " know "
anything ; and in discussion they always add " per-
haps " or " possibly," expressing themselves in-

AN APOLOGY TO ARISTOTLE 157

variably in this guarded manner, but never positively.
They are uncharitable, too, i.e. they are ready to put
the worst construction upon everything. Again, they
are suspicious of evil from not trusting anybody, and
they do not trust anybody from having had experience
of human wickedness. Hence, too, they have no
strong loves or hatreds ; but their love is such as may
some day be converted into hatred, and their hatred
such as may some day be converted into love. Their
temper of mind is neither grand nor generous ; not the
former, for they have been so much humiliated by the
experience of life as to have no desire of any great or
striking object or of anything but the mere appliances
of life ; nor the latter, for property is a necessity of
life, and they have learnt by experience the difficulty
of acquiring it and the facility with which it may be
lost. They are cowards and perpetual alarmists, their
disposition being exactly contrary to that of the young ;
for, as they are not fervent like the young, but have
cooled down, their old age has in consequence paved
the way for cowarding, fear itself being a sort of cooling-
process. They are fond of life, and never so fond of
it as on their last day ; for it is the absent which is the
object of all desire, and that which we most lack we
are most desirous to possess. They are selfish to a
fault, selfishness again being a species of mean-
mindedness. And from their selfishness it follows
that their standard of life is too apt to be expediency
rather than honour, for expediency is what is good to
the individual and honour what is good in an absolute
sense. They are apt to be shameless rather than the
contrary, for, as they pay less regard to honour than
to expediency, they are able to disregard appearances.
They are despondent, too, partly from their experience
of life — for the generality of things which occur in the
world are bad or at least do not turn out so well as
they might — and partly from their cowardly disposi-
tion. Again, they live by memory rather than by
hope, for while the remainder of their life is neces-
sarily short, its past is long, and the future is the

158 THE RIVER OF LIFE

sphere of hope, the past the sphere of memory. This,
too, is the explanation of their garrulity ; they are
perpetually talking over what has happened in the
past because of the pleasure they feel in recollection.
It is calculation rather than character which regu-
lates their lives, for the end of calculation is expediency,
but the end of character is virtue. The offences which
they commit take the line of petty meanness rather
than of insolence. The old are compassionate as well
as the young, not however for the same reason, for in
one case the reason is humanity, and in the other
infirmity, as the old suppose all manner of suffering
to be at their door, and this is a state of mind which,
as we have said, excites compassion. Hence they are
querulous, not facetious nor fond of laughter.'

SESTRI LEVANTE

17th August 1923. — Sestri Levante once more. Ten
years have gone, and the bay still laughs without a
stain at the feet of the hills which ring it in. Still it
shows a profusion of perfection in outline and colour-
ing. No doubt to many eyes that perfection would
be as great a non-conductor of sympathy as is the
similar quality in the music of Mendelssohn, in the
poetry of Tennyson and of Swinburne, and in the
painting of Veronese. Fortunately I have as strong
a stomach for Nature, for the Mediterranean, and for
the arts generally as Halifax tells us had Charles n.
for his mistresses. I like the goblet full, and do not
demand a dry vintage. And so I revel once more in
Sestri, and find its unchangeability delightful. The
little town is all that my memory painted it for me,
as each year during the war holiday time came round.
Our rooms were actually taken for August 1914, and
every year since it was always a case of, 6 Well, then,
we must go next year.'

SESTRI LEVANTE 159

In Sestri Levante you see all that in ordinary work-
day Architecture is adored. There is no great or
supremely beautiful building, but also there is no bad
building. The whole town has got the grand air in
its proportions, and the charm of that valiant sense
of colour which never deserts the Italian whether
he is painting a boat, the wayside shrine of Una
Madonna as an urchin once replied to my question as
to the saintship of a shrine, or the outside of a palace,
a church, a railway station, or a cemetery. The
Italian can be as vulgar as a French official architect
or as a District Council Surveyor in his design, but it
is rare indeed to find him mixing his colours with mud
as is the tragic habit of our builders.

Sestri' s earlier buildings are good, but its special
glory and most obvious charm is to be found in the
additions made quite late in its civic and, low be it
spoken, very commonplace and undistinguished career.
In the period 1816-1836 Sestri had, however, a real run
of luck. There is a little round Customs Office in the
port which shows perfection of attainment in the
thing aimed at in the happiest manner. It is only
about twenty feet high and has a diameter of about
fifteen feet, and yet, so happy are the proportions, so
exactly is the cornice placed in the right place and of
the right design, and so deftly is the circle broken to
make room for two little Tuscan columns and a recessed
porch, that the eye is feasted with delight. ' Ah, no
doubt, very pretty ; but remember with that Ligurian
oolite building-stone these effects are really quite easy
to get.' So says Pap worth Minimus, but he is mis-
taken. The circular Customs House and Office of the
Harbour Master of Sestri is not built of Ligurian oolite
or Parian marble, or of anything other than higgledy-
piggledy brickwork or else mere rubble, plentifully
plastered and with all the decorations and mouldings

160 THE RIVER OF LIFE

in hard lime plaster. Paint does the rest and shows
that, no matter how small his means, nor how poor
his material, if you leave him alone and do not corrupt
him with French, or English, or German mannerisms,
the Italian will pour out an endless stream of elegance,
glory, and felicity in stone or cement, brick or plaster.
Only to-day I walked on the breakwater which leans
against a magnificent piece of sea-ravaged rock hurled
from the bosom of the mountains when, in some vast
convulsion of Nature, the crashing Poles unbound the
ligatures of the Globe. On the top of a huge wedge-
like erratic block, some twenty feet high and with sides
as steep as those of a house, I saw a mason finishing off
an exquisite little shrine in which a Mariner's Madonna
was to be placed. It was in the rough at eight in the
morning. It was all neatly plastered when I passed
it at seven in the evening, and to-morrow no doubt it
will be painted. It is the size of a big doll's house,
and the little arch and mouldings round it are full of
charm.

CONCERNING CATS (ITALIAN VARIETY)

17th August 1923. — Something ought to be done,
and very soon, about Italian cats. They are a disgrace
to their species. They are lanky and ill-bred, and
timid and ugly, and uncertain of themselves, and their
ears are horribly long and often bald. They slink
where they should stalk. They look as if they were
perpetually dodging things that were being thrown
at them. ' It does me harm to see them,' as Carlyle
said when on his first visit to the Continent he saw
the priests and monks of Antwerp. I wish I was
younger and I would found a Society (registered as a
Limited Liability Company under the Act) for the
Improvement of the Breed of Cats ' in the Italian

CONCERNING CATS 161

Peninsula and the Islands of Sicily, Sardinia, Elba
and Pantellaria.' The only attempt up till now to
deal seriously with the Italian cat was on a side-issue,
and, I gather, almost wholly infructuous. I am told
that about 1858 a young Englishman, the Reverend
James Simpkin, P.P., a Puseyite and a Ruskinian,
wrote or contemplated a book on ' The Cat in Early
Tuscan and Umbrian Art, with an Introductory
Chapter by John Ruskin, Esq., M.A.' Whether the
book was ever put into circulation I do not know. It
may never have got beyond the publisher's announce-
ments. I am not, however, eager about it, for I am
sure the Early Painters knew nothing and cared
nothing about the true nature and magnanimity of
cats. The cat in his glory is essentially a seventeenth
and eighteenth century animal. The cat, of course,
existed in the Middle Ages, and fiercely, slyly, and pre-
cariously struggled to catch mice and even rats, but
he must have loathed the troubled, passionate, dirty,
unluxurious ways of that world of Bandits and
Tyrants, Saints and Artists, St. Francis of Assisi,
Savonarola, Saint Catherine of Siena, the ' divine
Isotta ' of Rimini, Caesar Borgia and his unhappy
4 friends.' The cat cannot give his strange personality
its rights unless he has leisure and luxury, and there
was neither in Italy till 1550. Some thirty or forty
years after that the self-respecting, dominating cat
begins to appear on the canvases of the Painters, and
to appear, not a lean, furtive, vagrant, and nocturnal
creature, but as a master.

One recalls at once the excellently characterized
cat in Paul Veronese's great picture in the Louvre of
' The Banquet in the House of Simon.' The cat,
indifferent, but vaguely tolerant of the great and
abundant ladies and their fierce lords and all the
splendour, lies on his back and plays energetically

162 THE RIVER OF LIFE

and yet delightfully, and as if it were the only thing
in the world worth doing, with a ball of string. His
great back-paws are working like swift strong pistons
to kick the ball and tear it to pieces.

Still more moving is the superb black cat seated on
a table by the side of the Doge Pallavicini of Genoa —
about 1630, if I remember right. The picture is, or
used to be, described in the guide-books — I have not
seen it since I was seventeen, but the impression is
vivid — as ' The Doge Pallavicini with his favourite
Cat.' I always loved that description. It seemed to
suggest a palace full of great lazy cats, hundreds of
them, who sat on the roofs in the sun in the winter,
and moved indoors in the summer heats and sat in the
great marble halls and staircases. Apparently the
Doge loved one face from out the hundreds and made
him or her his favourite. But the word is really the
wrong word. The cat is too dominant. It is not
the portrait of a doge, but of a cat ' with doge in
background.' You don't look at the doge, but only
at the noble black cat with very short ears, a flattish
head, small half-shut eyes, and his tail neatly curled
round his toes. That is the cat of quality, but you
never see his like now in Italy. How is that ? The
men and women of Italy are as proud in movement
and as handsome as ever. Why not the cats ? There
must be something wrong. Therefore let some good
cat-lover be up and doing and import a strain of
British prize cats into Italy. It is a work well worth
accomplishment. But, after all, there may be no need.
Why should not Mussolini take up the matter ? If
only he could be induced to do so, the thing would be
done. If His Excellency would only sign a decree, I
feel convinced that all the kittens born after its
promulgation would become plump, dignified, and
possessed of a proper sense of their importance. That

THE MUNICIPIO— UNRECORDED 163

the Prime Minister is a lover of cats actual or poten-
tial I feel sure. The cat is a dictatorial animal,
though I admit hardly a co-operator, or inspired
with the Fascist ideals of union and solidarity. Still
there are black shirts among them in plenty !

THE MUNICIPIO— UNRECORDED

ISth August 1923. — To-day we walked in the town,
part for our ease — the sun was hot and the streets are
shady — but 6 the greater part for pride,' for we have
been caught by the influence of the town and feel
about it as do the Sestrians, a people living at ease,
like Homer's Phseacians, but very devoted to the
Citta. All the big houses are good, the Villa Balbi is
magnificent, and the Municipio inside is as exquisite
a piece of work as the eye of the most fastidious could
desire. First for the Villa Balbi. Outside of Italy
it would be a perfect monstrosity in the street of any
town of the population and importance of Sestri
Levante. It is about the size of Lansdowne House
— a little less in length, but higher and more compact,
and therefore with quite as many rooms. It also has
attached to it a large building with a Madonna in a
niche and a door marked Opera Pia, which I take to
mean a kind of Private Almshouse and Clinic, or
Hospital. It abuts on the garden, which is filled
quite to the brim with palms, vast oleanders, ilexes,
and mixed flowering shrubs, all busy crowding into a
shade like the trees in Pope's Eclogue — ' Trees where
you sit shall crowd into a shade.' It was to these
words that Bononcini made such divine music.
Between the Opera Pia and the Villa proper is a vast
and rather futile, pompous, and pretentious gateway.
It leads nowhere, and the grotesque heads and stout
Putti, and the ornaments generally, look as if they

164 THE RIVER OF LIFE

had been well poulticed, and so rendered gross and
emollient in outline. All the same, I would not have
it altered. It is noble to put up such things. I can
see the Conte or Marchese, whichever he was, who
built the gateway, measuring the available gap
between the Opera Pia Dependence and the Villa in a
fever of excitement, and note him standing back with
a flourish after discovering that there was just room
to get in a pillared gateway ' with wings ' about two
feet wider than the great gateway of the Doria or
some c ranking ' Villa or Palazzo of Quality in Genoa.
So up went the new Barocco gateway and was painted
light buff. The Villa itself is imposing, but originally
was a very reticent and quiet semi-rural building of
the end of the seventeenth century, with a good
ground floor, respectable Mezzanine, spacious Piano
Nobile, and useful attic, with windows of the same
size as the Mezzanine. All is topped by a reputable,
appropriate, and sufficient cornice. There was, how-
ever, no masonry ornament except the just-noted
cornice, a nice set of plain mouldings round the
windows, and a charming round arch door outlined
in white marble. That was all excellent and most
appropriate. But apparently there was a 6 Brighter
Sestri ' movement in the town about fifty years ago,
and then some one had the whole of the huge facade
of the Villa painted salmon pink, inclining to a brown.
All sorts of features were invented and picked out in
pink — sham perspectives, illusory festoons, bogus
stone-dressings, and all the rest of it. You cannot,
however, vulgarize anything so grandiose by nature,
and so well proportioned as the Villa Balbi, though it
all seems rather a pity. Curiously enough, if the
colour had been a really good pink, or a bright buff,
with white outlinings, the effect had been delicious.
Nevertheless, the Balbi in its freshness and sturdy

THE MUNICIPIO— UNRECORDED 165

magnificence — it was thoroughly ' done over ' inside
ten years ago — is very satisfactory. The wonder is
how coolly the Italians take their big houses. Prob-
ably the owner has the income of a retired English
Public School Master or Colonial Bishop ; but the
size of his house does not seem to worry him in the
least. In England a man with such a house must be
a millionaire, or the father-in-law of a new rich
heiress, or perish in the attempt to live in it. Then
there would be a movement to turn it into a school,
or a hospital, or offices, or a suburban club, or museum.
Here in Italy they take their c huge structures ' quite
calmly, and do not put up the white flag at practical
calculations such as the following : 8 It would take
six housemaids at least, and four in the kitchen, and
four men in the pantry, and then the men must do
half the ground-floor rooms and all the balconies.'
Alas, this passion for organic cleanness assorts but ill
with Art ! It goes specially ill with grandiose archi-
tecture ! Civilization may sometimes go forward on
a powder- cart, but Art droops, halts, staggers, and
collapses when faced with such masters as the refuse
collector's wagon or the Urban District Destructor.
Only the Greeks knew how to combine beauty and
8 hygienic conditions.' Did they not make Health
into a Goddess, and yet not make her in the very
least ridiculous — not a sort of Beatified V.A.D. in a
bath sheet complete with bag of bandages, clinical
thermometer, and tourniquet, but an Olympian maid
with hair divinely dressed to show her well-poised
head, her shapely shoulders and her gloriously
moulded arms, a creature whose gait proclaimed the
Goddess ?

Now for the Municipio. It deserves two entries
' of about three thousand words each,' as the Editors
or Publishers say when they make merchandise of us.

166 THE RIVER OF LIFE

And a good thing, too, let me say in passing. These
same practical officials of the world of letters save us
from the very worst of ills — from allowing our follies
to fester into crimes. We Literary People can hardly
have too many reminders that we are not the noble
benefactors of the Human Race which we and our
families and friends are apt to pretend to themselves
and ourselves that we are. They, the said Editors
and Publishers, recall to us the wholesome, if un-
palatable fact that we are not Gods but men, and
rather small men at that !

' Mon Dieu, quels hommes !
Quels petits hommes !
Mon Dieu, mon Dieu, qu'ils sont petits ! '

A Publisher, not meaning in the least to be cynical,
ironic, or unkind, but simply thinking aloud, once
spoke to a friend of mine as follows : ' There 's no
sort of doubt about it, your last book was a big suc-
cess. There has been nothing like it in my time '
(author purrs applause). ' Absolutely ' (with enthusi-
asm). * Now that was simply because we hit the
exact right moment for publishing. A week earlier
or later would have been no good.' Then with in-
creasing eagerness and conviction he went on : c If
we had brought it out in the spring we shouldn't have
sold a copy ' (visible collapse of author) ; ' well, I
mean not a copy over the first eight hundred. Those
little things are what matter in a book. You want
to hit the tide exactly and use every ounce of it.'

At first, when he hears these home-truths, the
author's feeling is one of acute depression and humilia-
tion. But if he is wise, he will soon recover himself,
and get a sense of proportion. After all, it cuts both
ways. Such a hard view of our magna opera may
hurt us in our moments of rosy success, but when

THE MUNICIPIO— UNRECORDED 167

disappointment comes, as come it will, what a com-
forter it may prove, what a soother of wounded feel-
ings ! c Oh, the book was right enough, one of the
very best of this century ; but those idiots Blanker
and Beetle brought it out at the very worst moment
possible. Not only were there a Ministerial Crisis
and a General Election on at the unhappy moment
they chose, but also the great Malreward Divorce case.
It involved the question of the comparative credi-
bility of housemaids and house surgeons. The public,
wild, cultured, civilized, and barbaric, thought and
talked of nothing else for six weeks, and, when they
could attend to things again, my work was stale and
the book of the hour was The Psychology of the
Maiden Aunt.'' So you console yourself it was just
rank bad luck, and very possibly a kind friend will
endorse your self-help by declaring that it may prove
a capital nest-egg for your wife. ' A really good thing
like that can't die. Mark my words, if a new edition
is brought out, say a month after the obituaries, it
will become a best-seller in a second edition. The
thing has happened before, I assure you. You see,
the stuff 's really there. It only wants proper market-
ing. So cheer up and keep always in mind what
obituaries like yours will be can do to brisk up
sales.'

But what am I saying and where have I wandered
while the Municipio has all this time been waiting on
the mat ? What a tragedy ! But the truth is I don't
feel strong enough this morning to tackle the Muni-
cipio. I should not do it the peculiar justice it
demands. Besides, it deserves an entry all to itself.
Excuses ! Rank excuses ! Well, if you must know,
the English post will be in in five or ten minutes, and
that means The Times every day, and on Tuesdays,
i.e. to-day, The Spectator is also expected. The Spec-

168 THE RIVER OF LIFE

tator is bound to be a source of pleasure to me on a
holiday. If it is a poor number, I can strut about
and say, c Ah, well, I think we do better than that
when I 'm there. After all, there is something in the
reckless courage of a vital old age.' On the other
hand, if it is a good number, as I candidly admit it
usually is when I am away, one has an equally pleasant
sensation — ' They manage perfectly well without me.
I really need not fuss about my holidays being too
long. Another month would not matter in the very
least, and this would give me either two travel holidays
a year, or else an extra quiet hermit's month in which
I could write my long promised play, " Her Fighting
Soul," or else compose that film scenario, " Victims
of Virtue." No, I need not be rationed as to holidays
when this is the result.'

l§ih August. More Villas. — As a postscript to the
account of the Villa Balbi, I ought to add that there
is another villa, not in the town, but a mile outside,
which is quite twice as big as the Balbi or twice as big
as Seaford House. It stands close to the edge of the
Post Road, but it has attached to it quite a big park
surrounded by a high, stout, roughcasted wall. The
park must be at least a hundred acres, and is full of
big trees. The house would be a big country house
in England or Scotland, and is quite 6 a place.' Here
no one seems to notice it, though it is well kept up.
I could not find out its name or who owned it. All I
could learn was that it belonged to what an old lady
at Arco once described to me as ' a rich particular ' ;
not a bad attempt at un particulier riche. I tried to
count the windows and to compute the number of
housemaids required, but my heart failed me. I can't
think in housemaids above eight. After that the
numbers mean no more to me than a thousand millions

THE MUNICIPIO AT LAST 169

sterling does to the plain citizen with a hundred
pounds overdraft ! If, however, any one is great-
hearted enough to set his mind at work on the house-
maid problem in Italian palaces and villas, let him
consider the Vatican. In that palace there are eleven
thousand rooms. Let us say that each housemaid can
tackle eleven rooms. Then a thousand housemaids
would be required for the Papal establishment. The
mind reels at the thought of this holy regiment of
women ! How are they organized ? Is there a Car-
dinal of the Housemaids, I wonder ? If there is, I
pity him. Fancy arranging their Sundays out ! ! !

THE MUNICIPIO AT LAST

20th August 1923. — If I could describe, or rather
transfer to the written and printed page, the heart-
catch exercised by the Municipio on my mind, I should
have solved the problem of Architecture and how
and why it is one of the most emotional of all the
arts, and leads you with so sure a hand in exaltation
and surprise through the vast and shining Halls of the
Spirit. But though I have not the requisite strength
of soul, I shall not be able to find rest till I have said
something as to what I feel about the little Palazzo
in the main street of Sestri Levante. In one way
the thing is too small and obscure and uninspired to
make a fuss over or write home about. If, while I
am thrilling over it, Smithson were to appear on the
scene and to slap me on the back with a ' Hullo, old
chap ! what means this tumult in a vestal's veins ? '
or use any other of his canned witticisms — excellent
quality I admit, but still preserved provisions — I don't
know what I should be able to say in answer. Prob-
ably the best I could do would be to say, ' I will tell

170 THE RIVER OF LIFE

you when you can tell me why I am so tremendously
moved by so simple a piece of rhetoric as

1 For ever and for ever, farewell, Brutus ! '

Then I will tell you why the Municipio gets me.'

More evasions ? Very well, here goes, at any rate,
for a catalogue of the qualities that have moved me
so strongly. First of all, its charm is its amazing
simplicity and directness. It pierces your heart like
Wordsworth's Lucy or his 4 Extempore Effusion ' on
the death of Charles Lamb. Yet remember it is not
the simpering simplicity of the Malmaison Rococo or
the austere simplicity of the best age. It is neither
the child's gentleness, nor the scholar's, nor the well-
bred coquette's — ' affecting to be unaffected.' It is
the innocence of the pure in heart. There is no mixed
motive in it. The designer wanted to build for a
member of a respected, nay, noted Genoese family a
Palazzo which should be at once beautiful, appro-
priate, and useful. He kept that ideal before him. He
did not try to show off, or to shove his architectural
link full in your face, or to make you want to have
4 another just like it,' or to get the look of a big house
into a small, or the reverse. He just built on till he
finished and felt satisfied.

The site allowed a front on two good streets, but
gave no room for a ' Cortile.' There is a simple door
in each front with little or no ornament, but great
charm in the proportions. The sort of big corridor
which is thus formed between the two front doors is,
I suppose, about forty by twenty by fifteen feet. It
has the appearance of a small hall. In the middle of
the east wall is an arch, showing the first steps of the
most perfect small * grand staircase ' I have ever seen.
The broad steps — about six feet long — are black
slate. The balustrade, light and yet strong, was once

THE BARCA 171

white Carrara marble, now the shade of a very, very
faint, faded and dusty apricot. The marble columns
at each turn of the stairs — there are two flights to
reach each landing — are Tuscan Doric, and the stair-
case goes to the top of the house. The rooms on
either side are quite plain as far as masonry goes,
though no doubt they were originally painted through-
out. I had nearly forgotten the exquisite mouldings
in what I have called the hall. The coving is most
delicately and attractively accomplished and its out-
lines well, though not obtrusively, marked. There
are no pillars or pilasters, but the vaulting springs
from mouldings which just suggest the heads of
sublimated Tuscan columns in very low relief, and
then fade, or rather flow, away into the walls. They
affect one like the notes of a low but perfectly modu-
lated flute played a little way off by an enchanted
shepherd boy. That is all ; absolutely all there is to
be said about the Palazzo — except for the exquisite
quality of the white plastering of walls and ceiling —
and yet it stands for me as Perfection in the Archi-
tecture of Simplicity.

And the miracle of the thing is that no one made
any fuss about it when it was built, any more than they
do now, or ever will do. No guide-book mentions it.
It is and will remain unknown to the tourist for all
time. Not that they would dislike it. They could
not help liking it. It is, however, an essential part of
its charm not to demand violent attention any more
than a violet in a hedge.

THE BARCA

27 th August 1923. — Sestri Levante is in the summer
essentially a bathing-place. There resort many well-
to-do Italian families of the old nobility. It is not so

172 THE RIVER OF LIFE

fashionable as the Lido, nor so popular as Viareggio
(a kind of Brighton and Margate mixed), but a c good
form ' watering-place. Certainly the said families
seem very nice and are very good to look at. The
children are divine, and the grown-up young people
friendly, good-tempered, unselfconscious and excel-
lent swimmers. One gets, in fact, a delightful sense
of Italian family life. The papas and mammas may
incline to stoutness, but it does not prevent the
former from taking back-somersault headers off a
twenty-foot pierhead !

Now the chief fact about the bathing life and
organization is the Barca. She dominates it. The
Barca is the queen of the bathing part of the Bay.
We left her so when we were here ten years ago, and
we find her as firm in her place as ever, now we are
back again. She is moored at the end of the short
little pier in deep water, and a rope of about fifty or
sixty yards long attaches her to the pierhead and
enables timid swimmers to reach her as by a rail.
She is a country craft, painted outside white and green
with a line of black, and a kind of deep and salmon
pink inside. Her figure is not unlike that of the Lady
in Congreve's poem :

' Of size she is not tall or short,
And doth to fat incline
Only in what the French do call
Aimable en-bon-point.'

That is a polite way of saying she is tubby. Her
beam is about half her length and her prow and stern
are both rounded. She has a long mast, a good deal
aslant, and a long boom braced up to about four or
five feet above the taffrail. She is not decked, but
has very easily sloping sides so that she resembles a
very large open rowing-boat, and there is room in her

THE BARCA 173

for plenty of bathers to sit in the sun and gossip, and
dry off, and take headers off her sides or off the little
wooden staircase which conducts to her bulwarks.
She is a most comfortable place to sit about in, and
often has twenty or thirty bathers perched in her,
taking their amphibious ease. And a very beautiful
picture they make — the young men like bronze statues
with their tight- fitting white caps and the girls with
handkerchiefs on their heads all the colours of the
rainbow. Thus to bathers and spectators on the shore
she, the Barca, is always the centre of attraction.
Every one automatically makes for the Barca directly
after he or she has taken to the water and made the
first plunge.

The Barca, like all ladies and most ships, has a
special character, and in her case a very odd one.
When we were last here she suddenly disappeared.
The bathers were in despair. She went off in the
night as ladies of her kind always do. What was to
be done ? The bathing was spoiled. The glory of
Sestri Levante had departed.

I joined in a kind of informal deputation to the
Innkeeper to ask what had happened and to demand
her instant recall and restoration. And then we made
a most amazing discovery. Apparently she did not,
as we had presumed, belong to the Hotel. Our host
spoke in a perfectly detached way about her. He was
sorry, but it was obvious he did not feel the slightest
responsibility, only a kind of historic interest. He
could, at any rate, throw no light on the situation.
At the end of the interview, however, he suddenly
dropped into a kind of pensive, almost aloof tone, and
uttered, as if thinking aloud, the following oracular
remark, ' They were saying that she has already gone
to Elba.' Gone to Elba ! Then we were indeed
undone. She could not possibly be back till we had

174 THE RIVER OF LIFE

left. We had seen the last of the Barca, and the
bathing had lost all its poetry and romance. But the
end wa£ not yet. That very afternoon I happened
to take a boat and prowled about the Harbour, looking
at the strange local craft — all green, and gold, and
blue, and black. There was one biggish ship lying at
her moorings, a tramp steamer out of Leghorn or
Naples. She towered up like a leviathan among
minnows. For some strange whim I insisted on
rowing round her, and there lurking like a thief was
the Barca. She had struck her mast and adopted
one or two other ' stagey ' and conventional disguises,
but there was no mistaking her. It was the Barca all
right, though in blue spectacles, passing locally, no
doubt, under some such name as the * Angelica
Mortuomare.'

I was greatly moved, rowed home, and burst into
the Bureau, and flushed with excitement announced
that I had found the Barca. She hadn't gone to
Elba, was in no fit state to go there, but was lying in
compromising, not to say disreputable, circumstances,
in a corner of the Harbour. ' Can't you,' I exclaimed,
* get her back and give hope once more to us bathers ? '
or words to that effect. The gentlemen of the Bureau
said little, but they exchanged glances as if to say,
4 Well I never ! The cunning old thing ! How like
her ! How disgraceful ! ' To me, however, the Chief
only said with what Herman Melville calls c the vague
reserve of Heaven,' c Perhaps, then, she will be back
to-morrow. I shall see ; but certainly Wednesday
morning.' Actually it was Wednesday afternoon.
By the time the Hotel lunch was over she was back,
just as if nothing had happened, and the guests who
were not in the know only said, ' She must be a
wonderfully quick sailer to do Elba and back under a
week.' But I who knew seemed to catch a sort of

THE BARCA 175

defiant tone in her roll — 4 Well, what about it ?
What if I did ? Have you never had a spree ? '
That was what I learned from her bobbing up and
down and her sideways lurch in the water.

So much for 1913. But the singular thing was that
there was just such another episode in 1923. The
spree habit had survived the Great War. It hap-
pened that a day or two after we arrived this year
there was a Regatta with illuminations and fireworks
— quite charming these — but on the race day the
Barca was gone, and no trace. Persons who prided
themselves on their wit jestingly declared she had
entered for one of the sailing races and was being got
up to win in a neighbouring cove. But, of course,
that could not be !

The Regatta was a curious water frolic and difficult
to follow. At first all sorts of boats and small yachts
rushed up and down the harbour at full tilt and
seemed quite proud of remaining unrammed by each
other. Then without any particular signal all the
craft of all sorts and sizes gathered at about two
miles out in the Bay and there remained in a sort of
rocking bunch or 4 grumous mass.' Boats darted in
and out continually, but the swarm of small vessels
and boats remained locked in a kind of fast embrace.
There was a good deal of movement within the swarm,
but chiefly of a circulatory kind. The only thing I
could compare it with was the Caucus Race in Alice
in Wonderland. There everybody ran about till they
were too tired to go on.

Suddenly at about five the mass broke up and
everybody hurried home and tied up at the quay or
cast down their little anchors and began to get ready
for the illuminations and c Procession of Decorated
Boats ' timed for eight. As yet no sign of the Barca.
The Procession was like the race. There was no order

176 THE RIVER OF LIFE

of any kind, but only a vague tumultuary movement.
At last, however, we saw Chinese lanterns being
lighted in great numbers. Then out of the illumin-
ated darkness three stout vessels lurched very slowly
forward. As they rolled towards us in a kind of wavy
zigzag we saw to our consternation that the middle
one was the Barca, got up like a sort of Blousy Bride
of the Ocean. She was literally crammed full of
people, most of them musicians, and they made a
noise mighty even for an Italian popular Festa.
There were abundant signs of food and drink on board
in act of consumption, and the mast was fairly
straight, but the boom and every other place was
covered with highly- coloured lanterns. As she pro-
ceeded on her way, she pitched and rolled and showed
her fat sides. She was deep down in the water, for
she had seventy people aboard if she had one. Look-
ing at her, it was difficult to believe that she was not
in liquor, so untidy and dishevelled and bedevilled
did she appear. I had never before turned away in
shame from an inanimate object. The illusion of a
woman, whom you knew and rather liked, making
a hopeless exhibition of herself on the Marine Parade
at Brighton was so strong that one had to punch
oneself to get rid of it. The old tub was so crowded
that she looked like the mediaeval picture of c Ye
Shippe of Fooles.5 Further, she was towed forward
by a wretched sweating little row-boat. The thing
looked like Falstaff being led up Cheapside by his tiny
page. But happily the incident did not last long.
It was soon drowned in the fireworks. Next day,
however, the illusion was maintained in a most
uncanny way. All one day she lay just off her right
position, utterly dismantled. She seemed to have
lost all her belongings as well as places. The next
day a fisherman and his mate took nearly all day to

THE APENNINES 177

get her back into her proper position. We watched
the proceeding with hot cheeks. It can only be
described as a flagrant example of what funny people
mean when they talk about ' the morning after the
night before.' Truly it was a piteous spectacle. I
am sure, however, that if after another ten years I
revisit Sestri the Barca will be there and at her old
games. That sort of creature never really reforms
and settles down or gives it up ' once and for all.'
It is always too late for them to repent. Like Falstaff
again, they haven't the strength to repent !

28th August. The Barca once more. — I have just
seen a certain Mr. Jones- James, who, it appears, is a
Neo-Platonist who has built a villa at the edge of the
desert near Alexandria and has adopted, he says,
1 a considerable portion of the Gnostic Faith.' He
insists that inanimate things frequently, perhaps
always, have souls — the Earth has a soul — and
there is no reason why the Barca should not be so
possessed !

If she is, I am sure of one thing. It is not Helen
of Troy, or Cleopatra, or even Moll Flanders, or Doll
Tearsheet who is in charge. It must be good old
leery, liquorish, but kindly Mrs. Quickly, if it is any
one. She would quite naturally have taken to the
Barca if condemned for her peccadilloes to inhabit a
material thing.

THE APENNINES

28th August 1923. — Here we are where I have often
wanted to be — not merely looking at the Apennines,
or just brushing the dust off their august feet, but
right in the heart of them, i.e. four thousand four

178 THE RIVER OF LIFE

hundred feet up at the top of the ancient pass between
Modena and Lucca, i.e. at Abetone. It is a sample of
all Italy, or rather of all one-half of Italy, for the whole
land can but afford the Mountains and the Plains — the
Apennines, the valleys of the Po and its affluents, and
of such small imitators as the Tiber, the Anio, and the
rest plus the narrow strips of coast on either side of
the mountain Peninsula. To say this means that one
must never forget that Italy is a mountain country
and at least half its inhabitants are hill-men. And
the Apennines run from the very top of Italy, i.e.
from the place where they join the Maritime Alps to
the heel and toe of the Peninsula. They are arid,
but taken altogether they can furnish an enormous
amount of that white- coal (water power) which is des-
tined to be the new industrial force ; the force which
will make our wheels turn. And a blessed force.
It does not defile the air or the land. It may even
beautify them by its exploitation. Artificial lakes
high in the hills need not be ugly, and may be magnifi-
cent. It carries away its own waste-product and may
serve a city's thirst after it has lighted it or given it
power. So the Apennines are worth thinking about
and getting a close acquaintance with by any one who
wants to know not only about the land of all the
enchantments, but about the land that is destined
perhaps to play one of the greatest parts in the
restoration of the world.

Besides they, the Apennines, are worth perpetually
thinking about and writing about, ' on account of
their extreme beauty ' — as the schoolboy said when
asked ' Why were Ablatives retained in Latin though
dropped in Greek ? '

ON THE ROAD TO SIENA 179

ON THE ROAD TO SIENA

' Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks
In Vallambrosa, where the Etrurian shades
High overarched embower. . . .'

(Milton.)

* We too among the Apennines

Have found Etrurian shades ;
Seen Abetone's lordly pines,
Marcello's chestnut glades.'

(Prize Poem : * Italy,1 circa 1847-)

1st September 1923. — To-day by a cross-cut road
over various spurs of the Apennines we motored from
Abetone via Florence to Siena. It is a journey well
worth taking for itself and even without so delectable
an objective as Siena. (Viva La Lupa.) It is all
Italy in a compendium, or, to put it in another way,
it is like a very ample first sketch for a frontispiece to
Turner's Illustrations to Rogers's Italy. The villages,
towns, castles, villas, churches, and monasteries
crowned the hilltops and crags just as they ought to
have crowned them to please an artist on the look-out
for ' copy,' and everywhere the Stone- Pines, the
Chestnuts, the Beeches, the Rocks, the Torrents, and
the Ravines were properly bestowed. This sounds
like the ironic touch, but it is not so meant. One was
sincerely grateful to the landscape for being so exactly
up to sample when the sample was anything so
pleasant as Turner's Vignettes. As, however, Turner
and Rogers have said it all first, and so well, I shall
be silent. ' When the nightingale sings, the crow is
not heard ' — (Persian proverb). I shall, however,
have to make one addition to my previous note of
admiration, nay amazement, as to the size of Italian
villas. As we ran down the steep zigzags on the side
of the mountain under which Pistoja shelters herself,

180 THE RIVER OF LIFE

I saw on our left, about five miles away, perched on
an isolated but low spur of the hills, a huge building
which literally sprawled across the landscape. Sprawl
is, however, from some points of view an unfitting
word, for there was nothing ugly or disagreeable in
the building. Indeed, it suggested taste, proportion,
and that peculiar touch of comeliness which the rural
architects of Italy have always known how to bestow.
I was so greatly struck by the vast size of the building
that, though I thought it seemed civil, not ecclesiastical,
I asked our chauffeur in my worst Italian whether it
was a convent. ' Oh no,' he replied, ' it is only a
house — una villa? I went on to ask its name, ex-
pecting to be told that the Grand Duke of Tuscany
had built it in the seventeenth or eighteenth century.
Instead, the motor man dismissed it as nothing of any
importance. He couldn't for the moment remember
what it was called, but it was just a villa, an ordinary
private villa. When I went on to ask what was the
name of the owner, he could not recall it. And yet
it was apparently very much bigger than Wellington
Barracks ! It was also in excellent repair and had
every sign of use and prosperity. It was quite impos-
sible to talk of it, a la Ruskin, as spreading c in white
ruin from hillside to hillside.' It was as little ruinous
as the Bank of England. So I had to fall back upon
my old system of computation and once more wildly
endeavour to think in housemaids : ' If at Lambeth,
as I have heard, they cannot " manage " without
eight housemaids, how many would they want here ? '
I supposed about twenty-four. But what is the use
of talking about twenty-four housemaids ? To the
ordinary man or woman the words are quite meaning-
less. Personally I should take to the woods when I
passed the datum line of eight. What a dreadful sub-
ject for a nightmare is suggested ! The dreamer would

ON THE ROAD TO SIENA 181

be trying to hunt down the twenty-fourth housemaid
through vast and echoing registry offices fitted up in
the Vatican or Fontainebleau with endless clerks
sitting at desks and typing out ' particulars of your
exact requirements, please ; did you say eighty bed-
rooms and twenty sitting-rooms and one bathroom
on the first floor, or was it two in the basement or in
the attic ? And did I rightly understand no hot
water except in the kitchen ? '

And then the scene would suddenly change and the
hunter becomes the hunted. Twelve couples of house-
hounds (Lady Pack) in caps and aprons would in full cry
pursue the dreamer through a vast Italian villa. She
would dodge and dive frantically to escape from the
hunt, but as she threw them off at the base of the
Great Staircase and began to hope, she would meet
them coming noses down out of the Loggia on the
Piano Nobile or in the narrow corridors of the Mez-
zanine. But why go on worrying myself with other
men or women's woes ? Capital Levy or no, I shall
never get beyond c the two housemaid line,' and
perhaps not be able even to maintain that modest
maximum.

But though that vast villa on the mountain side
haunted me for a mile or more and seemed as if it
might stretch out to the crack of doom, a turn in the
road at last took it from my harried vision, and in a
few minutes we had stayed the wheels at Pistoja and
were not considering abstract household problems or
making weird calculations in housemaids, but debating
the important and immediate question whether to
lunch early where we were, or late at Florence.
Florence had it.

182 THE RIVER OF LIFE

SIENA

9th September 1923. — We have been at Siena nearly
a week, but as I am not writing ' Memorials of an
Italian Holiday,' nor a guide-book, nor anything
approaching thereto, I shall say little or nothing
about this glorious testament in brick, stone, and
paint to the best side of Mediaeval Italy. This Diary
for good or bad is a spasmodic record of the thoughts,
emotions, intuitions, fancies, ergotisms, guesses, con-
clusions and inconclusions that pass across a human
mind. As I do not wish to appear to be suffering
from an inferiority complex, I am not going to
apologize for making so much of a pother about my
self and my feelings. No man need ever apologize
for putting as much of himself as he can on record.
To let one's pen run away with one is a duty for any
one able to accomplish that difficult task in mental
equitation. To float for a little on the River of Life
— if I may change my metaphor — and to note the
currents, eddies, and rapids rather than to be wholly
absorbed in the labour of the oar is well worth while.
I take pen in hand to show the working of my own
brain, not to describe material things or to analyse
other men's natures. These have their place, no
doubt, in a daily digression and in the log of a boat
on the River of Life, but only indirectly and by way
of background. In any case Siena is a precious
vintage and needs no bush. I shall carry with me as
long as I live the picture of Guidoriccio dei Fogliani
in the great hall of the Palazzo Communale. There
are two great castles, a camp, and two lines of stockade
in the picture. But of living things none, except
' The Captain of the Wars ' and his horse caparisoned

FAREWELL TO ITALY 183

in brownish trappings ornamented with diamond-
shaped pieces of green and black cloth. The greatness
of the deed could not have been more potently sug-
gested. The mighty soldier rode out absolutely alone,
summoned the enemy's castle to surrender, and
received it. ' Alone he did it ' has never been said
with greater truth.

FAREWELL TO ITALY

11th September 1923. — We have just left Genoa, and
so I must say farewell to Italy. I am not super-
stitious, or weighed down by any premonition, but I
am caught by the perfectly rational inquiry, * I
wonder whether I shall ever see Italy again ? ' In
all probability I shall, for I like to take holidays
abroad, and my first choice is always Italy. Still,
without any gloomy assumptions as to ' the life of
the writer being short and precarious ' and so forth,
I can think of a hundred reasons why I may never
be able to get to Italy again. For example, I want
to go to India, to Rio, to the Cape, to America, to the
West Indies, to Madeira, to Egypt, to Palestine, to
Greece, to Australia and New Zealand, to Constanti-
nople, to Denmark, to Finland, to Russia, to Sweden,
to the North Cape, to Vienna, to Prague, to the High
Alps, and to Poland. And I only take one holiday
a year and am sixty -four. Therefore, though I
am an optimist, I can hardly expect more than
twenty years of travel. On these grounds, it is
not unreasonable to think it possible that I have
in fact said Good-bye to Italy. In truth, my
mood is exactly expressed by the enchanting lines
in Julius Caesar in which Brutus and Cassius

184 THE RIVER OF LIFE

take leave of each other just before the Battle of
Philippi :

* Brutus. And whether we shall meet again I know not.

Therefore our everlasting farewell take :
For ever, and for ever, farewell, Cassius !
If we do meet again, why, we shall smile ;
If not, why then, this parting was well made.

* Cassius. For ever, and for ever, farewell, Brutus !

If we do meet again, we '11 smile indeed ;
If not, 'tis true this parting was well made.'

And then follows from Brutus the inimitable heart-
cry of the man before action :

' . . . 0, that a man might know
The end of this day's business ere it come !
But it sufficeth that the day will end,
And then the end is known.'

' For ever and for ever,' then farewell, Italy ! I shall
certainly smile when we do meet again, and if we do
not, well then this parting was well made. There will
be no one to smile and no one to say, c You were right.'

How exquisitely the words ' For ever and for ever '
fall on the ear. Had any one, I wonder, used them
just in that way before ? The translators of the Bible
came, of course, very near, but there is not the same
liquid cadence in 6 For ever and ever.' It just misses
the honied accent.

It is curious to remember that Pope pounced on the
lines in Julius Caesar and made them the key phrase
in the key couplet of the most inspired piece of Society
verse in all literature — The Rape of the Lock :

' The Peer now spreads the glittering forefex wide
To enclose the Lock, now joins it to divide ;
The meeting points the sacred hair dissever,
From the fair head for ever and for ever.'

FAREWELL TO ITALY 185

But this was by no means the only occasion on which
Pope took a metrical hint from Shakespeare. Every
one knows the lines summarizing certain female types
in the Epistle on the Characters of Women :

1 Or her that owns her faults but never mends,
Because she 's honest, and the best of friends :
Or her whose life the church and scandal share,
For ever in a passion or a prayer :
Or her who laughs at hell, but (like her grace)
Cries, i Ah ! how charming if there 's no such place !
Or who in sweet vicissitude appears
Of mirth and opium, ratafie and tears ;
The daily anodyne and nightly draught,
To kill those foes to fair ones, time and thought.'

That this is an excellent mould into which to run
shorthand criticism will be allowed at once by any
one who has ever tried this type of gnomic verse.
But Shakespeare had it first, as is proved by these
lines from Othello put into the mouth of Iago :

* She that was ever fair, and never proud ;
Had tongue at will, and yet was never loud ;
Never lack'd gold, and yet went never gay ;
Fled from her wish, and yet said — Now I may,
She that, being anger' d, her revenge being nigh,
Bade her wrong stay and her displeasure fly ;
She that in wisdom never was so frail,
To change the cod's head for the salmon's tail ;
She that could think, and ne'er disclose her mind,
See suitors following, and not look behind ;
She was a wight, if ever such wights were,
To suckle fools, and chronicle small beer.'

While I am dealing with Pope's ingenious borrowings
I may note another on which I stumbled the other
day. Pope wrote and Bononcini set to alluring music
the lines in the Eclogues :

* Where'er you walk, cool gales shall fan the glade,
Trees where you sit shall crowd into a shade.'

186 THE RIVER OF LIFE

Now turn to your Hudibras, and in one of the few
verses meant to be beautiful in the poem you will
read :

1 Where'er you walk your foot shall set
The primrose and the violet.'

People who steal as cleverly as Pope deserve in truth
not censure but our heartiest thanks.

I expect there are lots more ' steals ' in Pope,
especially from Shakespeare. ' If I were younger I
were bolder,' and I would try and find more. As it is,
I must be content to make the suggestion to the
intrepid scholars of the new age. It will be an
amusing hunt and, I expect, will lead to many
pleasant kills. The Dunciad is good covert to draw,
and so are The Temple of Fame and the Eloisa and
Abelard. I have no exquisite reason for it, but yet
I somehow think reason enough to hold that the
great line, 4 The shrines all trembled and the lights
burnt low,5 is a crib, but from whom I know not,
though I vaguely hazard Dry den, or Rowe, or Otway.

A PROBLEM IN PSYCHICAL RESEARCH

20th September 1923. — My granddaughter of five is
as ingenious and as ingenuous as she is beautiful in
looks and engaging in manners. To-day she ambushed
me with a most attractive suggestion. The conversa-
tion turned on Toast, and I idly repeated the old
rhyme about how some one says :

' Did you ever see the Ghostesses
A-sitting on the Postesses
A-eating of buttered Toastesses ? '

1 What are Ghostesses ? ' asked Susan. I knew at
once that I was in for trouble. I ought not to have

A PROBLEM IN PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 187

talked about Ghosts. It is a barred subject for fear
of terrors ' on the stairs and in the dark ' and general
folly and confusion. All I could do was to say that I
didn't exactly know, but that anyway they were very
nice and particularly kind to little children, to whom
indeed it was their invariable custom to offer hot
buttered toast. I tried a side-issue here and dwelt
with unctuous, not to say sodden, greediness on the
deliciousness of the bottom pieces. Susan was tactful
and polite, but I could see she perfectly realized my
embarrassment and my pitiable effort to hide it.
Fortunately for me, however, she had got an idea of
her own which she much wanted to work off. There-
fore she did not expose me. When I lamely paused,
she said largely, ' Are they Ghosts' wives ? ' I leapt
at the idea as a man in a burning house leaps to catch
a rope. Yes, I was sure they were; just as Duchesses
are the wives of Dukes and Lionesses of Lions, so
Ghostesses are the wives of Ghosts. Thus all ended
well and was well. No ' phobias ' were sown or
reaped, and we all felt comfortable.

All the same, Susan's suggestion rang in my head.
After all, it was a very sensible one. Postulate
Ghosts and you naturally get females of the same
nature, i.e. Ghostesses, or wives of Ghosts. But if
Ghosts have wives, what, one may well ask, are the
relations between the ladies and gentlemen in ques-
tion ? Do the Ghosts and Ghostesses behave like
husbands and wives all the world over ? Do the
Ghosts strut about and pretend to a large mastery,
4 I will and must be master in this house, haunted or
unhaunted, furnished or empty ' — well knowing all
the time that they can't move without an endorsed
decision. Again, do the Ghosts' wives say to their
lords, 4 Do you realize what time it is ? It 's ten
minutes to twelve already and you are due at a haunt

188 THE RIVER OF LIFE

in Yorkshire at five minutes to midnight. It 's there
you have to say, " The hour has all but struck and I
can answer nothing now." If you are late again,
there is certain to be a row. And then remember the
Psychical Society-Puzzler said he was most anxious
you should do some Pottergeist stunts in Devonshire
to-night.' And then does the Ghost reply, ' Do please
stop fussing. I 've plenty of time. At least, I should
have had if you hadn't kept me here arguing. Where 's
that wretched housemaid hidden my helmet and
gauntlets ? I put them in my dressing-room ! '
4 Nonsense ! ' Of course, I didn't.' c Well, I shall go
without them unless — Oh, here they are. Sorry,
good-bye — back one- thirty.' Again, does his wife
say to the Poudre Ghost (Sir Joshua's portrait shows
him in peach-coloured velvet), ' You really must have
this coat seen to. It's positively in rags, and not even
clean rags. It looks simply sordid. I 've reminded
you about it again and again and told old Perkins,
but neither you nor he ever notice anything ' — and so
on and so on ? Well, I wonder ? What a question
for Sir Thomas Browne. He loved such homely and
intimate problems. Needless to say, however, I did
not approach Susan with them. If I had, she might
easily have fixed a pair of gimlet eyes on me — celestial
gimlets made of the brightest and bluest steel — and
asked, ' Do they talk like that to you, Grandpapa ? '
and what should I have said then ? However, I am
distinctly one up on the transaction. I have got a
new definition, and a new definition is like a new
diamond. ' Ghostesses, wives of Ghosts ; obsolete,
except in Dialect, Yorkshire, Somerset, and parts of
Glamorgan.' That would look well in a dictionary.

LIMERICKS 189

LIMERICKS

Mh October 1923. — I have been interested in lim-
ericks, and especially the Lear variety, all my life.
Of late what have fascinated me most have been the
metaphysical limericks. The following limerick by
Father Ronald Knox is in my opinion one of the best
ever written :

* There was a young man who said " Damn !
I clearly perceive that I am

Predestined to move

In a circumscribed groove,
In fact, not a bus, but a tram." '

Another metaphysical example, written by a friend,
is pure nonsense, but delightful nonsense :

' There was a young man of Cadiz,
Who inferred that life is what it is,
For he early had learnt,
If it were what it weren't,
It could not be that which it is.'

My only serious contribution to limericks is, I fear,
hardly worthy of insertion. It is also of the meta-
physical kind :

* There was an old man who said " Motion,"
A state of, 's a comical notion.
It would seem to connote,
That a single U-boat
Could be at two spots on the ocean.'

Here is another metaphysical example by Father
Ronald Knox. It is beyond praise for its compression :

1 There was a young man who said God
Must think it excessively odd

That this sycamore tree

Just ceases to be
When there 's no one about in the Quad.'

190 THE RIVER OF LIFE

GREAT BOOKS

10th October 1923. — It has been said, and as I think
most truly, that great men are commoner than great
books. Great authors almost always show certain
weaknesses in parts of their work, and therefore their
works are, taken as a whole, patchy. Almost the only
author absolute in her perfection throughout her
literary achievement that I can think of is Jane
Austen.

A book which can claim the honour of being ranked
among the great books of the world must be good
throughout, good in the whole, good in the part, good
in general structure, good in details. It must main-
tain a constancy of achievement found seldom in the
arts. In the sense in which I am using the phrase
I do not mean by a great book an ennobling book, or
necessarily a book with the highest qualities of human
genius. I mean a book which, whatever its aim, high
or low, grave or gay, satirical or instructive, critical
or creative, exactly accomplished the aim of its author.
It is a book which never fails in its aim. It hits the
bull's eye at every discharge.

One of the books that attain pre-eminently this
intense, if limited, perfection is Swift's Tale of a Tub.
It is not only a great but a terrible book, a book which
we must honour, but which we cannot like, a book
which leaves us not happy or re-established in mind
and purpose and eager for better things, but full of
perplexity and shame. It shows us things in the
human mind which we would rather not see. It tells
us of that of which we should all prefer to remain
ignorant. Let no one imagine that I am repeating
the commonplace criticism of Swift for his nastiness,
for his mere obscenities and derogations from those

CICERO 191

decencies which protect us from physical nausea in
literature as in life. I am thinking of something quite
different, of the appalling inhumanity of the man's
mind and of that quality which made the trembling
Vanessa give forth her agonized cry, ' Surely no man
ever thought like you.'

The Tale of a Tub is one of the great books of the
world. That is a proposition which cannot be chal-
lenged. We are amazed as well as appalled by the
frightful energy and concentration which marks its
every page. It boils like a witch's cauldron. We
shrink soul-smitten, though we say with Swift himself,
1 Great God, what a genius I had when I wrote that
book ! '

CICERO

16th November 1923. — If men were to be judged by
their bedside books, we should, I expect, get some
surprises and also a good many shrewd hints as to
people's characters. For example, I am the least
Ciceronian of men, and yet by a series of accidents
there is no book I am more apt to take up for sending
myself to sleep than a volume of Cicero's Letters.
That sounds terribly priggish, or shall I say terribly
scholarly, and yet I am not a scholar and I hope not
more of a prig than my fellows. Certainly I am not
an admirer of Cicero's character or way of looking at
the world. Indeed, I regard him from many points of
view as little better than a reactionary humbug. He
is, indeed, all I dislike in Politics, Literature, and I
had almost said Morals, for his Stoicism is of the
cheap, machine-made kind. What I really value in
Cicero is the delightfully unconscious humour of the
man and his extraordinary power of self-revelation.
His Letters are some of the greatest — perhaps the

192 THE RIVER OF LIFE

greatest — of c human documents,' to use an altogether
disgusting, worn-out and abominable, though useful
phrase. When you read Cicero's Letters you feel that
a very wise old gentleman has taken you by the hand
and is dexterously leading you through the political
labyrinth which surrounded the inmost and secret
shrine of the Roman Republic. The truth is, one
may guy Cicero — he is very guyable — and may make
all sorts of criticisms of him ! But he remains eter-
nally attractive as a writer, and even as a politician.
Poor man ! he was born out of his due time.

Cicero would have been much happier if he had
lived in the unspacious days of Queen Anne and
George i. He would have been incredibly comfort-
able in those sordid but yet intellectual surroundings.
There was enough revolution in the air to give him the
political interest and excitement which he loved, and
never so much as to endanger his position, or to tempt
the pious and patriotic politician to be cringing or
disingenuous. A periwigged patriotism would have
suited him to a ' T.' What an exquisite Epistle Pope
would have written to him — ' And you, brave Tully,
Wisdom's Saint and Sage.'

But alas for poor Cicero's happiness ! He was born
in a terrible age, an age of earthquake and eclipse,
the age of Pompey and Caesar, and of their feud of the
giants. Cicero longed pathetically for a respectable
republic. Yet such was the ignominy of the times
that he had to spend the best years of his life skirmish-
ing with such people as Caesar and Pompey, Catiline
and Mark Antony, Dolabella and Octavius, Brutus
and Cassius, and all the motley and ignoble and yet
iron-hearted and granite- fisted crew that thronged
the Forum and caught the World's great hands. He
had even to endure the supreme humiliation of seeing
dark and venal ladies and other fi designing females '

CICERO 198

like Cleopatra upsetting his schemes. He liked a
touch of political intrigue with c the sex ' well enough,
but it must not be pushed too far. It must be con-
ducted with decency and decorum, and without blood-
shed or super-scandal, or at any rate with the very
minimum of such nasty things.

To a man of this kind the political atmosphere
prevailing practically during his whole life was a long
martyrdom. He was always having to make com-
promises between principles and safety, and loathing
himself for doing so. By the way, how the motto
4 Safety First ' confronting him on every bus would
have wrung Cicero's heart had he lived in these days !
It was on that principle that he almost always acted
in politics. Yet his whole life was a pretence that he
did nothing of the kind. His inner maxim was,
4 Never do an ignoble or unpatriotic act unless it is
positively necessary, and even then howl about it if
you dare.' Nevertheless, he hated hedging and play-
ing for safety, and having to be sly, cautious, and
cynical. The force of circumstances would not even
allow him to stand neutral. He would have been
willing to be neutral on a moral issue, to borrow a
famous phrase from our own age, but he could not
even attain to this ambiguous refuge.

In one of his letters to Atticus he brings this out
with great poignancy. Atticus, after the way of the
' hard-shell ' business friend when he writes to a
politician, advised him to keep clear of embarrass-
ments and not to commit himself too much to either
side, and so forth and so on. Cicero wails back in
effect, c What is the use of this talk about not com-
mitting oneself ? You forget there are only two
lobbies, and I have got to be in one of them. When
the Quaestor says, Marcus Tullius, which way do you
vote ? I am done. I can't scuttle out or abstain.

N

194 THE RIVER OF LIFE

I am " for it " one way or the other. I must, however
much I dislike it, come out in my true, or at any rate in
some, colours. To sit perpetually on the fence would
merely be to make myself hated by both sides, or lose
all my influence and my position. In fact, I should
commit political suicide. It is a horrible position for
me, and you don't help me a bit.' And so poor Tullius
toils on, letting other people down, or moaning over
the way in which they let him down, never quite
severing himself from any one, and therefore never
really enjoying the confidence of any one.

Yet, curiously enough, such was the admiration
Cicero inspired amongst cultivated and responsible
Romans that even in those days so full of death,
dread, and disaster he would almost certainly have
lived, if power had not passed for a certain time into
the hands of so brutal a savage as Mark Antony.
Caesar, with his coolness of mind and temperate
cynicism, took the exact measure of Cicero, and had
evidently decided to spare him whatever happened as
a kind of museum specimen : 4 One of our old-time
moralists : useful if absurd.' Pompey, had he won,
though apparently he had no great use for Cicero,
would never have punished him for ' hedging off a
bit ' and reducing his liabilities on the Caesarian side.
And Octavius, if he had had his own way, would
almost certainly have saved Cicero and would no
doubt have used him as he used Horace and Virgil.
We can well believe that if Cicero had not been hacked
to pieces by Antony's bravoes, as might easily have
happened if he had been a little more prompt and
skilful at getting away, he would have been allowed
by the Divus Augustus to go for a short period of exile
to Spain or Athens or the Province. When he came
back he would have helped the astute Medicean
bourgeois autocrat, not of Tuscany but of all the

CICERO'S LETTERS 195

world, to place the empire on a basis of respectable
logic with a dash of reasonable religion, the whole
refreshed with a sound agricultural and commercial
policy — c More crops and less conquests.' We can
imagine that Cicero's last two books, De Rusticis and
Be Imperio, would have been most edifying and
would have justified the ways of the Emperor to man-
kind in a manner which would have enchanted all
peoples that do dwell in the world of letters down to
this present.

CICERO'S LETTERS

17th November 1923. — It is difficult, when one writes
about Cicero, not to be a little scornful, and I see on
reading over my last entry that I was all that, and
something more. I am sorry and I regret my ill-
temper. Though obviously a very easy way of
treating him, it was a poor way, and a poor recom-
pense for all the delight the letters have given me.
Cicero's faults were all on the surface, and, owing
to his intense respectability and virtuousness, he is
the least difficult man to quiz who ever lived. Yet
all the same he was a most lovable man and a man
of supreme ability. Nobody can read his books
or read a good biography of him without coming
under the wand of the enchanter. He was so human
and so pleasant and so dignified, always ' so exceed-
ingly nice.'

One likes him even when he is most upset and
shocked at the goings-on of his fierce and vulgar
relations, for all the time he shows a genuine sense of
humour. When he has to tell Atticus how very badly
the great banker's sister Pomponia, married to Cicero's
brother Quintus, behaved on a certain occasion, you
may still see through the words the humorously

196 THE RIVER OF LIFE

pursed-up lips of the old gentleman and the naughty
glint of amusement in his furtive eye. He tells with
infinite gusto the painful story of the frightful scene
she made at the tenants' dinner, of her going to bed
and refusing to eat the nice supper sent up to her
room, and of how she declared that she had been
made a stranger in her own house, meaning, of course,
that she intended her husband should be the stranger !
Then Cicero drops a delightful word or two that
makes us glow with amusement. As he finishes the
story of the row, he interjects to Atticus : ' You
will say that it was no great matter. But you
should have seen — and heard — your sister? That
4 heard ' shows the real humorist. He is making
use of his own reticent, hushed voice to give a
comic touch.

Very characteristically, he does not seem to have
faced the music himself, but to have kept quite quiet
all the time. He wants Atticus, however, to give his
sister a good talking to, and thus ends the letter :
4 So you may tell Pomponia from me that* on that day
she did not act like a lady.' She had shown herself
lacking in that humanitas which was a religion to
Cicero. She had made a vulgar scene before her social
inferiors — indeed, before the whole village — and that
was the '^unforgivable sin !

TRANSLATING RACINE

29th November 1923. — The distich habit, like opium,
cocaine, whisky, or excessive cigarette smoking, when
once adopted, is very difficult to shake off. That is
my excuse for entering here two distichs which have
been running in my head for a long time and will
perhaps be 'laid' by the spell of transcription. They

TRANSLATING RACINE 197

are attempts to paraphrase certain lines from Racine.
But Racine is the most difficult author to translate in
the world.

Dryden could have translated Phedre into couplets,
and would no doubt have made a tremendous success
of such a poetic adventure. The play would have
been less fastidious and less detached, and therefore
less truly tragic and universal in its appeal than the
original and uninterpreted work of c M. Hippolyte,'
as Dryden, perhaps a little jealous, called Racine.
But it would have been a noble piece of work, and
Dryden would have contrived to get into it some of
that humanity and pathos which always dignified
his verse. There is nothing chill, or relentless, or
ruthless, or remorseless about Dryden. He is a red-
blooded man if ever there was one, and, whatever
else he was, Racine was not that. One cannot excuse
him by saying that he generally dealt with the Classics
in his tragedies, and therefore was naturally led to
a certain aloofness and inhumanity. He is almost
as unnatural when inspired by a modern tragedy,
witness Bajazet, as he is with Phedre or Berenice.
For pure cold-bloodedness there is nothing in the
world to equal the Grand Vizier's great apologia
for Etatism carried to the extremity of perfidy and
perjury. Neither Machiavelli nor the philosophic
defenders of Prussian statecraft ever went so far
as did Racine in this passionate defence of the
broken promise, the fraudulent treaty, and the scrap
of paper.

Here are my two attempts on Racine :

(Phedre imagines herself before the Judgment- seat
of Minos) :

' Constrained my crimes to count, perchance to tell,
Of deeds as yet unregistered in Hell.'

198 THE RIVER OF LIFE

((Enone threatens suicide) :

1 A thousand roads lie open night and day.
To that dread shore, I '11 take the nearest way.'

I will support these by some examples of distichs
culled in my own garden :

The Convalescent

' Death turned his head and looked at me awhile.
I shuddered. He passed on. Next time I '11 smile.'

The Universal Escalator

1 Some stand at ease ; some on fierce action hurled
Race up the Moving Staircase of the World.'

To M. Tout-a-tout, Publicist

* From Cats to Currency, from Kant to Keynes,
Pours the wild torrent of his turbid brains.'

Kind only to be Cruel

' So kindly pitiless, so madly sane,
You saw the human soul across the grain.'

THE CALL OF THE SNOWS

20th December 1923. — The season of the snows is
upon us, and many a heart is being moved among
those to whom the call of the mountains is potent,
nay, imperative. To lie awake in London and think
of the bright clear air of the Swiss highlands under
the moon or the stars, or the great fields of snow
sparkling in the ardent sunshine of midday, produces
a sense of nostalgia which is almost agonizing in its
intensity. It is strange that a country which has
no mountains of its own, or, at any rate, very few
that have the true touch in them, should be the home

THE CALL OF THE SNOWS 199

of the race which, above all others, feels the fascination
of the hills.

Let others praise the distant prospect of Monte
Rosa or the Matterhorn, the glorious pageant of the
Oberland from the Terrace at Berne, or the Valais's
depths profound. It wants a man of English breeding
to have his blood stirred by the feel of a glacier under-
neath his feet, to riot and revel in a snow-slope or a
rocky arete. Even the Elizabethan poets, who had
little or no personal experience of the Alps, seem
somehow to have got the true fascination into their
veins. For example, Beaumont and Fletcher make
the British Warrior Queen speak of ' the untrampled
deserts where the snows are.' Who could better this ?
All the magic of the snow seems to be frozen in eleven
syllables. It is exactly this sense of 6 untramplement '
(to use a barbarous phrase), of the mystery, purity,
and aloofness of the snow, which so greatly stirs the
passions of the mountaineer. Again, Donne, in the
wonderful travel-poem addressed to his wife, catches
something of the same emotion. Throwing himself
into her place he says that when he is away she will
wake from her dream, to call aloud :

• I saw him go, o'er the white Alps alone.'

There are literally thousands of English men and
women who seem sluggish and unmoved among the
ordinary beauties of Nature, and perhaps have no
knowledge at all of the beauties of literature. Yet
the heart you thought so dull and tame will flutter
with a wild delight when the fingers of the dawn
spread their enchantments of rose, azure, and jade
upon the mountain peaks, or when the gorgeous and
jewelled hand of the sunset is colouring some snowy
range in saffron and crimson, and when the vault
of heaven, against which it is set, has become the

200 THE RIVER OF LIFE

colour of a blue moth's wings, or of that old-fashioned
blotting-paper which one adored as a child. The
colour could also be found in esoteric sealing-wax.

But, hush, I am losing touch with all the dreary
and tragic realities of life — the Tariff, the Referendum,
the Ruhr and the Rhineland. If I run on in this way
I shall either paralyse myself with longings for the
snow which cannot be realized, or else play the truant
and have to be chased back by my colleagues and my
staff through the rocks and forests of the Grisons.
The hunt is up. I can see them hot on my track on
the Bernina or up the Stelvio. They just miss me
in the Pusterthal or by the red rocks which ring in
Cortina. I escape by a miracle at Meran. I can
even see the sensational bills and headlines con-
cocted by contemporaries jealous of my freedom
who have remained in London : c TRUANT EDITOR
DRAGGED FROM GLACIER CAVE.' c FIGHTS
LIKE A BEAR.' ' DECOYED BY A BOGUS BILL
DECLARING LORD ROTHERMERE TO HAVE
TURNED TRAPPIST.'

Alas ! this winter I can only indulge in dreams of
future joys, and find my consolation in the delights
of the past — those noble years when we were twenty-
one, when the charms of the winter in the Alps had
only just been discovered, when the Canadian toboggan
had not penetrated to Switzerland, and when the little
old-fashioned sledgelet held the field, when skis did
not exist in any shape or form, when snowshoes or
raquettes were regarded as impossible.

When, in 1883, I went out to spend a winter with
my uncle, Mr. John Symonds, the discoverer, for
England, at any rate, of winter in the High Alps, I
may be said to have stood by the very cradle of
Alpine sports. I remember being at a committee
held in his library for founding the first International

THE CALL OF THE SNOWS 201

Toboggan Race, and I remember the grave and eager
discussions as to what sort of cup he should present.
Those were great and simple days, and they had one
charm which, alas ! is tending to become wholly
obsolete. In those days there were practically no
mountain railways and you had to seek your destina-
tion in a sledge, most comfortable, most easy, most
romantic of all the forms of transport known to man.
In my Swiss experiences of forty years ago and more,
I think I crossed every high mountain pass kept open
in winter, and crossed them, of course, in box-sledges.
I cannot remember how many times I crossed the
Julier or made the minor passage from Davos to Chur,
and again from Davos direct by the Fluela or the
Albula to St. Moritz. Again, in mid-winter I have
crossed the Spliigen in a blizzard — one of the most
thrilling experiences of my life. From St. Moritz to
Chiavenna, the key of the Rhaetian Alps, as the
Romans named it, was an easy but very delightful
sledge-drive. The Hospice I loved best was that on
the Bernina. As the snow deepened, often to twelve
feet, you moved up a floor. I shall never forget, one
especially hard winter, seeing there icicles as burly
as giants and as tall. Clear but wrinkled they stood
up in the moonlight like awful ghosts of the dead
Romans who had trod that pass when the Caesars
laid their heavy hands on the Julier, the Septimer,
and the Bernina. Then the Via Mala in winter was
full of romance. There I heard, or fancied that I
heard, the phantom drum of the French soldier who,
when Macdonald passed the Spliigen, was swept away
by an avalanche. It dropped him and his platoon
on a kind of snow island which formed for a little
time in the dreadful gorge. They could no more be
helped than the castaway in Cowper's poem. But
for all that the drummer beat the advance upon his

202 THE RIVER OF LIFE

drum and cheered on the legions of the Republic
marching to stand by the armies of the First Consul
in Italy.

People do no journeys now by sledge. The railway
is quicker, though certainly it is not half so pleasant.
To be wrapped in thick furs, to have the sun warming
one's cheeks and yet know that you are moving in
some forty degrees of frost is a kind of Paradise. A
few people go sledge-rides for pleasure, but as a rule
now the skating-rink or the ski-ing fields or the dance
floor seem to offer superior attractions. But perhaps,
after all, the younger generation is right, for, though
a good snow track on the post road, a good horse, and
a sledge with long runners give the poetry of motion,
I admit that the skier can get, not only to the highest
heavens in the Alps, but can attain to the most
fascinating form of motion next to galloping on the
back of a thoroughbred. Indeed, though no skier,
I am not sure that the skier cannot justly claim to
hold the key of the door which opens to the greatest
of all athletic pleasures.

Long may the lure of the Alps hold us and our race !
A visit to the Alps still remains the best possible of
holidays. No man or woman is really at his or her
best till he has got above the six thousand feet level.
That is happiness. To add another four thousand
feet is to many of us to attain to a taste of Elysium
while still in the body natural.

Ah, happy, happy pair ! You are taking the
golden road to the snows. The sparkling crystals
are your lodestars. The still, clear air you breathe
is your benison and your glory. Of all the amours de
voyage those of the Swiss highlands in winter are the
best.

BYRON AS A LOVE POET 203

BYRON AS A LOVE POET

27th December 1923. — Byron fancied himself as a
love poet, and was so confident and vehement in this
assertion that he managed to convert most of his
contemporaries, i.e. the readers of the English and
American worlds, and of the Continent, to think-
ing that he was what he claimed to be. Yet, in
reality, though no doubt the poet of conventional
passion or even of sexual desire, he did not under-
stand the hearts of either men or women. He was
full of go and vigour, and of poignant, though rough,
melody ; but love in the true sense rests on reflection,
and, as Goethe said with his unerring diagnosis in
literature and the human emotions, ' When Byron
reflects, he is a child.' It is part of the paradox of
Byron's genius and of the attitude of the world towards
him, that the best love poem that he ever wrote, the
one that has most depth of feeling and a touch of
something which is almost like reflection, is almost
unknown. The poem I mean is the ' Opening Lines
to Lara.' These were cancelled by Byron, and
remained unknown till about twenty-five years ago,
when they were published in a monthly periodical,
Murray's Magazine. Then, owing to some contro-
versy as to who owned the copyright, they were not
included in the Complete Poetical Works of Byron —
that admirable edition which includes so many valu-
able fragments of the poet, for Byron was one of those
poets who are often at their very best in fragments.
It takes art, knowledge, patience, and unselfishness to
finish a poem or a picture. When the poem was
published in Murray's I remember quoting it in The
Spectator without any protest, and I hope I may take
that as a sign that I can quote it here, without

204 THE RIVER OF LIFE

indiscretion and without violating anybody's legal
rights :

Opening Lines Written to Serve as an
Introduction to Lara.

When she is gone, the loved, the best, the one

Whose smile hath gladdened though perchance undone ;

Whose name, too dearly cherished to impart,

Dies on the lip, but trembles in the heart ;

Whose sudden mention can almost convulse

And lighten through the ungovernable pulse,

Till the heart leaps so keenly to the word

We fear that throb can hardly beat unheard,

Then sinks at once beneath that sickly chill

That follows when we find her absent still ;

When such is gone, too far again to bless,

Oh God, how slowly comes Forgetfulness !

Let none complain how faithless and how brief

The brain's remembrance or the bosom's grief ;

Or, ere they thus forbid us to forget,

Let Mercy strip the memory of regret.

Yet, selfish still, we would not be forgot ;

What lip dare say, c My Love, remember not ? '

Oh, best and dearest, thou whose thrilling name

My heart adores too deeply to proclaim !

My memory, almost ceasing to repine,

Would mount to Hope if once secure of thine.

Meantime the tale I weave must mournful be,

As absence to the heart that lives on thee.

The lines, as one sees, have every kind of objection
from the point of view of diction, phrase, and even
grammar. And yet how full they are of the Vitamines
of Poetry ! What could be more moving than the
line :

* And lighten through the ungovernable pulse ' ?

JEREMY TAYLOR 205

JEREMY TAYLOR

28th December 1923. — I have been reading Mr.
Martin Armstrong's selections from the works of
Jeremy Taylor and find them quite delightful. As a
rule I may be described as a foe to selections, though
somehow or other I have always been a great reader
of them. One is apt to be suspicious of the selector
and to think that he has left out the things one would
have liked most, and that he is thinking of his own
predilections rather than of yours, though how, poor
man, he is to guess what yours are it is hard to say !
However, Mr. Armstrong is a very comprehensive
and intelligent selector, and furthermore Jeremy
Taylor is so terribly diffuse a writer that the ordinary
man cannot possibly find time to dig out the gems
for himself. Jeremy Taylor was in reality an orator,
and a very good one ; but he suffered from the orator's
chief vice, profusion of words. Even in the dedica-
tions of his books he could not abandon the oratorical
manner, though a dedication should in truth be much
more like an inscription than a speech. But Jeremy
Taylor was no friend of the lapidary style. He liked
the lava torrent of eloquence too much. Take the
example of the dedication of The Liberty of Prophesy-
ing to Lord Hatton of Kirby. It is magnificent, but
it is an address on ' the presentation of, etc.,' not a
dedication :

4 My Lord, in this great storm which hath dasht
the Vessell of the Church all in pieces, I have been
cast upon the Coast of Wales, and in a little Boat
thought to have enjoyed that rest and quietnesse
which in England, in a greater, I could not hope for.
Here I cast Anchor. And here again I was exposed
to the mercy of the Sea and the gentlenesse of an

206 THE RIVER OF LIFE

Element that could neither distinguish things nor
persons. And, but that He who stilleth the raging of
the Sea, and the noise of His Waves, and the madnesse
of His people, had provided a Plank for me, I had been
lost to all the opportunities of content or study. But
I know not whether I have been more preserved by
the courtesies of my friends or the gentlenesse and
mercies of a noble Enemy.'

But, though I think the passage far too eloquent
for a dedication, it is, of course, a magnificent piece of
prose. One has not read three lines before one feels
that a true master of words is at work. Here is the
necromancer who is not afraid, like so many of us, of
the verbal devils which he raises by his incantations.
His words never mutiny or go to the left when he
gives them c Right incline ! ' They ' jump ' to his
behests sea-fashion and carry out all their orders
' lively ' and well.

It must not be supposed that Jeremy Taylor is
always diffuse, or, to be more correct, diffuse all the
time. Like all great orators, he was also a great
phrase maker. Take, for instance, the following :
4 Religion is worth as much to-day as it was yesterday.'
Poignant and worthy of Sir Thomas Browne is the
following : ' A man talks of religion but as of a dream.'
Neither Fleet Street nor all the editorial offices in New
York could better, as a ' caption,' the perfect sim-
plicity of ' It was well observed by the Persian Ambassa-
dor.' That last is the prelude of a delightful story
of how the young gallants of the Persian army before
a battle railed at their gods, c saying that there were
no such things, and that all things came by chance
and industry, nothing by the providence of the
supreme power.' But when next day they had been
handsomely trounced by their enemies, they were all
for prayer and fasting ! Jeremy Taylor, when rubbing

HORACE AS A POET 207

in the obvious moral, shows a charming example of
the intimacies of his style. For instance, in speaking
of the broken sinner, he says how he changes his
impudence into ' the blushings of a chidden girl.'
Yet one more admirable headline out of many may
be taken, though it is perhaps a little too long to call
a caption : ' We do not live in an age in which there
is so much need to bid men be wary, as to take care they
be innocent.'

HORACE AS A POET

30th December 1923. — Nothing enrages me more
than to hear Horace spoken of as if he were a poet of
the first rank. He is nothing of the kind. Horace is,
par excellence, the poet of the unpoetical. His own
phrase a little altered may be applied to him. He
speaks of performing the functions of a whetstone.
He performs to a nicety the functions of a touchstone.
It is by his opinion of Horace that you quickest find
out whether a man has or has not got the true sense
of poetry. If he is enthusiastic over Horace and tells
you, ' That 's the kind of poetry I like — the perfect
expression of a clear-cut thought,' you know that your
interlocutor has not the very slightest notion of what
poetry really is.

Poetry is, above all things, the outcome of passion.
But of passion Horace knew nothing, though of the
sex instinct he knew, no doubt, a good deal. Poetry
is simple ; that is, it is unmixed. It makes a direct
frontal attack on the emotions. Horace could make
an excellent prose report on the feelings ; but the
emotional appeal, which Virgil used with such tre-
mendous force, was utterly beyond him. The tragedy
of the ' air-reaching arm ' was not for the laureate- in-
waiting to Augustus. Poetry, again, acts on the

208 THE RIVER OF LIFE

intellect through the senses, and so is at once hypnotic
and mystic. Horace could not rise above the curiosa
felicitas — an enchanting trick, but one which in fact
belongs just as much to the prose writer as to the poet.
This lack of the supreme sensuous appeal is especially
apparent in Horace's use of metre. In one sense he is
marvellously successful as a metrist ; but you can
always see the machinery at work. The sound wins
your ear, but there is none of that indefinable magic,
that divine lilt, which makes the heart interrupt its
rhythmic duty. The prosodiacal elegancies of the
Odes are often amazingly clever, but they are not the
Orphic harmonics that move trees and mountains.
Horace is liked as men like Tokay or Chateau Yquem.
For Catullus and Virgil is reserved that adoration
which knows no doubts, no fears, no disillusion.

Do I really mean to say that Horace is not a poet ?
Did not half the statesmen of the eighteenth century
carry little Aldine editions of the Odes in their pockets ?
Was not the power to quote Horace a passport which
would carry a man from Warsaw to Palermo ?
Exactly ! I say with a full sense of this dread
responsibility that Horace was no poet. In my own
family there is a tale of an Indian Civil Servant of
great mental attainments, but with no sense of poetry,
who throughout his career in the Wellesleyan epoch
was never without a pocket Horace and a pocket
Hafiz. His childlike faith in Horace makes it certain
that he had no notion whatever of the true afflatus.

A proof that Horace is essentially unpoetical is to
be found in the fact that he is untranslatable, except
in such pieces of pure persiflage as the Persicos Odi.
You can transfer into another language some deep
emotion, some cry of the heart, some tear for mortal
things. A piece of verbal felicity is another matter.
It will not stand transplanting. Look at the innumer-

HORACE AS A POET 209

able attempts to translate Horace's Epistles, which
unquestionably contain delightful examples of literary
artifice. Though many great poets have tried, none
has succeeded in giving us the spirit of the Epistles.
Yet both Dr. Johnson and Dryden achieved the
Juvenal c touch ' in their translations. Pope's imita-
tions of the Epistles are good only because they travel
so far from the original as to cease to be in touch
with the poet supposed to be imitated. During fifty
years I have never failed to look at translations and
imitations of Horace ; but, strange as it may seem,
I can think of only one which has enough life in it to
be remembered. And this exception is only con-
cerned with four lines. The opening lines of Byron's
Hints from Horace, ' being an allusion or partial
imitation in English verse of the Ars Poetical are, no
doubt, excellent, and though I have not read them
for thirty years, I believe I can still quote them
correctly :

' Who would not laugh if Lawrence, hired to grace
His costly canvas with a flattered face,
Belied his art, till Nature with a blush
Saw " Kits " grow Centaurs underneath his brush ? '

That is alive ; but I defy any one to get anything
memorable from the rest of the poem. After all,
even here the thought is not very deep, nor is the
language in which the obvious is conveyed very
felicitous. Frankly, Byron's Hints from Horace are
quite unreadable, though, curiously enough, Byron
actually died in the belief that this futile imitation
of a not very memorable original was his most suc-
cessful work.

I have, greatly daring, expressed my exact feeling
about Horace ; but in doing so I have not forgotten
Halifax's wise dictum, quoted elsewhere : c A man

o

210 THE RIVER OF LIFE

that should call everything by its right name would
hardly pass the streets without being knocked down
as a common enemy.' However, I must risk it,
though it would perhaps be wise to avoid intellectual
society till this book is forgotten. Throwing stones
at or into a river is a much-loved occupation for all
boys of all ages and sexes.

A SWISS SCORE

3rd January 1924. — Here is a story which shows
that the Swiss are by no means so slow-witted as is
often assumed. A French soldier reproached one of
the Papal Swiss guards for being a mercenary : ' Vous
ne battez que pour de l'argent, tandis que nous ne nous
battons que pour de l'honneur.' c Bien,' replied the
Swiss, ' tout le monde se bat pour ce qui lui manque.'

DISRAELI AS AN APHORIST

6th January 1924. — Of Disraeli's maxims, political
and social, I never tire. Here are some examples :

c In his organization there was a deficiency. He
was a man without affections, though it would be
harsh to say he had no heart, for he was susceptible
of great emotions, but not for individuals.'

Is it possible for a man to be capable of abstract
who is not capable of individual emotion ? I should
say that it was quite possible for a Jew. All through
Jewish literature it is difficult to discern between
racial and individual feeling. This curious personality
is the keynote of Disraeli's aphorisms and 6 pregnant
sayings.' The philosophy to be obtained from the
maxims as a whole is cheerful, though realistic ; the
advice given is sound when the writer is concerned
with serious matters, and cynical when he is dealing

DISRAELI AS AN APHORIST 211

with social success. ' Existence is a pleasure — and
the greatest ' ; but c there is always something to
worry you. It comes as regularly as sunrise.' You
may ' rest assured you must go through every trial
that is peculiar to men of your organization.' It is
taken for granted that every man is ambitious.
6 Every one loves power, even if they do not know
what to do with it.' Not many men, of course,
become famous. ' Very few people reach posterity.
Posterity is a most limited assembly.' A modicum
of success, however, depends, I am given to under-
stand, very largely upon a man's self, though, ' as a
general rule, nobody has money who ought to have it.'
Here are some items of counsel. c Next to knowing
when to seize an opportunity the most important
thing in life is to know when to forego an advantage.'
This is excellent advice, though even in argument not
easy to take. The next is more cynical. ' Always
have distinguished friends. Never have fools for
friends, they are of no use.' Any social success, how-
ever unimportant, is enjoyable. ' To be king of
your company is a poor ambition — yet homage is
homage, and smoke is smoke — whether it comes out
of the chimney of a palace or of a workhouse.' ' To
govern men,' I read, ' you must either excel them in
their accomplishments or despise them.' Even with
one or both of these qualifications it seems, however,
that a certain amount of sympathy must be experi-
enced or feigned. ' To rule men we must be men ;
to prove that we are strong we must be weak ; to
prove that we are giants we must be dwarfs ; even
as the Eastern genie was hid in the charmed bottle,
our wisdom must be concealed under folly, and our
constancy under caprice.' A great deal, he asserts,
is to be learned from women. ' Talk to women as
much as you can. This is the best school. This is

212 THE RIVER OF LIFE

the way to gain fluency, because you need not care
what you say, and had better not be sensible.' This
maxim as it stands is not wholly flattering to women,
and does not convey Disraeli's attitude towards their
sex quite accurately. He dwells continually upon
the brains of his female characters, whether he intends
to charm or to repel the reader. His most perfect
heroines owe as much to their wits as to their beauty.
On the other hand, the lady who had ' guanoed her
mind with French novels ' was, he admits, amusing
company ; and he never allows the brains of his
heroines to be overshadowed by their prejudices.
The description of the Duchess of Bellamont, who
lived among the Puritan aristocracy, and ' shrank
with a haughty terror from the fashionable world,' is
a case in point. c She was a woman of fixed opinions
and firm, compact prejudices. Brought up in an
austere circle where on all matters irrevocable judg-
ment had been passed, which enjoyed the advan-
tages of knowing exactly what was true in dogma,
what was just in conduct, and what correct in manner,
she had early acquired the convenient habit of deci-
sion, while her studious mind employed its consider-
able energies in mastering every writer who favoured
those opinions which she had previously determined
were the right ones.'

The definition of religion which finds a place among
these maxims is incontrovertible, a perfect example
of one of those specious statements of fact which are
not expressions of the truth. ' Religion is civiliza-
tion, the highest ; it is a reclamation of man from
savageness by the Almighty.' I am reminded of
Disraeli's definition of the Church, to which the same
criticism applies. ' The Church is a sacred corpora-
tion for the promulgation and maintenance in Europe
of certain Asian principles which, although local in

DISRAELI AS AN APHORIST 213

their birth, are of divine origin and of universal
application.' Disraeli's greatest admirers could
hardly call him a religious man. Yet religion had a
strange attraction for him. He writes of the devout
emotions of his heroes and heroines with at least as
much zest as he writes of their wealth and luxury.
To his mind, all good things came from Judea, and
all that was Jewish was good.

Turning from religion to law, I get some really
fine sayings full of sagacity. 4 The divine right of
kings may have been a plea for feeble tyrants, but
the divine right of government is the keystone of
human progress, and without it government sinks
into police, and a nation is degraded into a mob.'
While I am thinking of ' divine right,' an exquisite
piece of Royal flattery hidden under the guise of
Monarchic philosophy is well worth quoting. 4 The
first great duty of a monarch is to know how to bow
skilfully. Nothing is more difficult ... a royal
bow may often quell a rebellion, and sometimes
crush a conspiracy.' Two more maxims I cannot
forbear to quote, the one for its curious sidelight on
political history, the other for its obvious Parlia-
mentary wisdom. ' I have observed in our history
that it is the characteristic of this country that it
always retraces its steps. I believe the prosperity of
England may be attributed to this cause, not that
it has committed less blunders than other countries,
but that the people are a people more sensible of
their errors.' Here is the second : ' No government
can be long secure without a formidable opposition.
It reduces their supporters to the tractable number
which can be managed by the joint influence of
fruition and of hope. It offers vengeance to the
discontented, and distinction to the ambitious ; and
employs the energies of aspiring spirits, who other-

214 THE RIVER OF LIFE

wise may prove traitors in a division, or assassins
in a debate.'

Those who regret the lost ideals of Victorian days
would do well to read the sixth chapter of the fifth
book of Coningsby, wherein Disraeli summarizes his
view of smart society in the 'forties. c Lucretia had
passed her life in a refined but somewhat dissolute
society, not, indeed, that a word that could call forth
a maiden blush, conduct that could pain the purest
feelings, could be heard or witnessed in those polished
and luxurious circles. The most exquisite taste per-
vaded their atmosphere, and the uninitiated who found
themselves in those perfumed circles and those golden
saloons might believe from all that passed before them
that their inhabitants were as pure, as orderly, and as
irreproachable as their furniture. But among the
habitual dwellers in these delicate halls there was a
tacit understanding, a prevalent doctrine that required
no formal exposition, no proofs, no illustration, no
comment, and no gloss, and which was rather a tra-
ditional conviction than an imparted dogma, that the
esoteric public were the victims of very vulgar preju-
dices which these enlightened personages wished
neither to disturb nor to adopt.'

There was never drawn a better picture of that last
stage in which pollution makes the water not turbid
but bright and clear, not disgusting but tasteless and
odourless.

POPES LADY SUFFOLK

7th January 1924. — Lady Suffolk, Pope's friend and
the alleged mistress of George n., seems to have been
the perfect woman of the world. Perhaps the best
picture of her character is to be found in the wonder-
ful Dialogue between Lady Suffolk and Queen Caroline

POPE'S LADY SUFFOLK 215

given in the Report of the Historical Commission
preserved at Blickling, Norfolk, and published some
twenty years ago. The essence of the conversation,
which is as follows, strongly supports ' the belief of
her friends, to which Horace Walpole refers while he
dissents from it, that Lady Suffolk's connection with
the King was confined to pure friendship.' Lady
Suffolk tells Queen Caroline that, considering the open
proofs she has received from the King of his disfavour,
she feels she has no course open to her but to retire
from Court. The Queen expresses great surprise.
4 Child, you dream ! ' she exclaims. ' How has he
shown his displeasure ? Did I receive you as if you
were under mine ? ' ' No, Madam,' she replies, fc if
your Majesty had treated me in the same manner the
King did, I could never again have appear' d in your
presence.' Caroline continues her efforts towards
conciliation. Lady Suffolk, she is sure, has taken
undue umbrage. c You are very warm,' she remon-
strates, ' but, believe me, I am your friend, your best
friend. You don't know a Court.' Lady Suffolk,
however, will not be appeased. ' I fear, Madam, if
I have not acquir'd knowledge in twenty years I never
shall now,' she says. 4 I beg it may be permitted me,'
she goes on, ' to speak of the King as of a man only
who was my friend. He has been dearer to me than
my own brother, so, Madam, as a friend I feel resent-
ment at being ill-treated and sorrow to have lost his
friendship.' The Queen still maintains that the whole
thing is a matter of passing irritation. ' Lady Suffolk,
I daresay if you will have a little patience the King
will treat you as he does the other lady's, and I suppose
that would satisfy you.' ' No, Madam,' is the succinct
reply, which does not, however, appear to anger
Caroline in the least. Once more she begs her to
remain in the Royal household, promising to influence

216 THE RIVER OF LIFE

the King to forgo his mysterious displeasure. c I
never will be forgiven an offence I have not com-
mitted,' cries Lady Suffolk. * After five and twenty
years to be ill-treated without knowing my crime and
then to stay upon the foot of Lady Albemarle ! ' The
Queen tries to reason with her upon another score.
4 Upon my word, Lady S., you don't consider what the
world will say. For God's sake, consider your char-
acter. You leave me because the King will not be
more particular to you than to others.' Lady
Suffolk's answer is worthy of the woman who was
not c awed by rumour.' ' Madam, as to my character,
the world must have settled that long ago, whether
just or unjust.' A more dignified role than Lady
Suffolk played throughout this interview it would be
hard to imagine, and it certainly leaves upon the reader
an impression of honesty in every sense of the word.
As to the immediate cause of her disfavour with the
King, historians differ. Probably it may have been
nothing else than her increasing deafness. The King
wanted some one who could amuse him, sympathize
with him, give him ideas, of which he had not too
many, and serve him as a funnel whereby he could
receive the thoughts of better heads. Lady Suffolk
was interested alike in the affairs of State and the
petty gossip of the Court, just as she was friendly
alike with politicians, men of letters, and women of
fashion. Her deafness, which for years had not been
serious enough to interfere much with her conversa-
tion, became latterly an inevitable drawback. She
had cultivated a friendship — supposing it to have
been nothing more than a friendship — with a selfish,
hard-hearted, worldly man because he was a King,
and she deserved to suffer ; but she suffered with
dignity and self-command. She was, no doubt,
a woman to whom the opinion of the world was

POPE'S LADY SUFFOLK 217

supremely indifferent, and the atmosphere of a Court
supremely delightful. There are many men and a
few women who care only for their own good opinion
— it is on this supposition alone that we can excuse
her toleration of Swift's hints.

In view of so spirited a courtier and so undisturbable
a woman, can we wonder that when Lord Peter-
borough, the last of the old Romantics and the first
of the new, when he was dying, gave her a noble
testimonial ? He had been reading a book on Julian
the Apostate. He learnt there c how a soldier, a
philosopher, and a friend of Lady Suffolk ought to
die.' The key to her conduct may perhaps be found
in the letter she wrote to Mr. Berkeley, to whom, after
Lord Suffolk's death, she was in middle age happily
married. ' There was no company at the tea-table
on Tuesday but what most people hate to keep, but
for whom I have so particular a respect and regard,
that upon her approbation for every action of my life,
my ease and happiness has and must always depend.'

What Lady Suffolk and the Queen say of The Court
as an entity is curiously supported by the comment
of that Humanist born out of his due time, Master
Walter Map. Here is his attempt to define, or at any
rate describe, the Court :

1 " I am in time, and I speak of time," said Augus-
tine, and straightway added, " I know not what
time is." With like wonderment can I say that I am
in the court, and speak of the court, and know not —
God alone knoweth — what the court is. This I know
withal that the court is not time ; it partaketh, indeed,
of time's temper, a thing of flux and change, of a place,
and yet of subtle shifts, never persisting in the same
subsistence. At my withdrawal from it, I know it
through and through ; on my return to it, I find little
or nothing that I have left there ; having become a

218 THE RIVER OF LIFE

stranger I view it as a thing altogether strange. The
court is the same, but the members are changed. If
I shall describe the court as Porphyrius defineth
" genus," perchance I shall not lie in saying that it is
a multitude which standeth in some relation or other
to one chief principle. Certainly we are an un-
numbered multitude, striving to please only one man,
and to-day we are one multitude, to-morrow we shall
be another. The court indeed is not changed, it is
always the same.'

This cannot be bettered, though it was written about
1160 or so — a period which in our arrogant ignorance
we are inclined to regard as purely barbarous ! The
longer I live, and the more I read, the less I take on
trust or hearsay, the more inclined I am to hold that
in anything approaching similarity of circumstance
men and women act to a sealed pattern. As Steven-
son said in a pet, ' Man is a kind of nauseous ape.'

DIARIES

10th January 1924. — Wesley's Diary is one of the
longest in the world. It is often dull, but there are
also often very brilliant and moving entries. Here is
a splendid passage of invective, worthy of the scholar
and the divine, in which Wesley summed up his
detestation of Machiavelli :

' In my passage home, having procured a celebrated
book, the works of Nicholas Machiavel, I set myself
carefully to read and consider it. I began with a
prejudice in his favour, having been informed he had
often been misunderstood, and greatly misrepresented.
I weighed the sentiments that were less common ;
transcribed the passages wherein they were contained ;
compared one passage with another, and endeavoured
to form a cool, impartial judgment. And my cool

DIARIES 219

judgment is, that if all the other doctrines of devils
which have been committed to writing since letters
were in the world were collected together in one
volume, it would fall short of this : and that should
a prince form himself by this book, so calmly recom-
mending hypocrisy, treachery, lying, robbery, oppres-
sion, adultery, whoredom, and murder of all kinds,
Domitian or Nero would be an angel of light compared
to that man.' (26th January 1737.)

The date is noteworthy. There were very few
people in that bleak epoch, between the eclipse of
Pope and the rise of Johnson, who could have written
this noble passage. Dean Beeching, in his Pages
from a Private Diary, said of Wesley's Diary :

c Every page of the journal testifies to the scholar
no less than the gentleman. He quotes obscure
Greek epigrams ; he reads to his Savannah flock
exhortations of St. Ephrem Syrus.'

While touching on Diaries I feel, however, that
I must pay my meed of homage to those of Queen
Victoria. Could anything be more perfect than the
following :

* 1837. — Lord Melbourne rode near me the whole
time. The more I see of him and the more I know of
him, the more I like and appreciate his fine and honest
character. I have seen a great deal of him every
day these last five weeks, and I have always found
him in good humour, kind, good and most agreeable :
I have seen him in my Closet for Political affairs, I
have ridden out with him (every day), I have sat
near him constantly at and after dinner, and talked
about all sorts of things, and have always found him
a kind and most excellent and very agreeable man.
I am very fond of him.

4 1838. — I asked Lord Melbourne how he liked my
dress. He said he thought it " very pretty " and that

220 THE RIVER OF LIFE

" it did very well." He is so natural and funny and
nice about toilette, and has very good taste, I think.

' 1839. — Said to Lord M. I was never satisfied with
my own reading, and thought I put the wrong
emphasis upon words ; he said, " No, you read very
well ; I thought you read it very well this morning" ;
and I said I often felt so conscious of saying stupid
things in conversation and that I thought I was often
very childish. " You 've no reason to think that,"
said Lord M. ; and that I feared I often asked him tire-
some and indiscreet questions and bored him. " Never
the least," he replied, " you ought to ask."

c Talked of my being so silent, which I thought
wrong and uncivil as I hated it in others. " Silence
is a good thing," said Lord M., "if you have nothing
to say." I said I hated it in others and that it annoyed
me when he was silent. " I 'm afraid I am so some-
times," he said : " won't say a word." Yes, I said, that
nothing could be got out of him sometimes. " And
that you dislike ? " he said. Yes, I said, it made me
unhappy, which made him laugh.

c Talked to Lord M. of his being tired, and I said he
mustn't go to sleep before so many people for that
he generally snored ! " That proclaims it too much,"
he said, in which I quite agreed.'

THE ART OF TRANSLATION

17th January 1924. — The question of translation
has always fascinated me, and especially during the
last few years when I have become an industrious
reader of the Classics through translation.

The two poles in translation are the paraphrase,
and pure construing or verbal substitution, i.e. the
English word for the foreign word. Which method
should be employed is a difficult question, and largely
depends upon the reader's taste. The best thing
ever said on the problem is to my mind the passage

THE ART OF TRANSLATION 221

in Selden's Table Talk. Though it is, no doubt,
known to most reading people, it is so short that one
may as well put it on record here :

4 There is no book so translated as the Bible. For
the purpose, if I translate a French book into English,

I turn it into English phrase, not into French-English.

II fait froid, I say, it is cold, not it makes cold ; but
the Bible is translated into English words rather
than into English phrase. The Hebraisms are kept,
and the phrase of that language is kept : as, for example
(he uncovered her shame), which is well enough, so
long as scholars have to do with it ; but when it
comes among the common people, lord, what gear
do they make of it ! '

I have no doubt myself that the translation by
verbal substitution is the one which gives us much
the most local colour and puts us more en rapport
with the writer. When the Bible was first trans-
lated, no doubt it seemed perfectly strange and un-
intelligible to many readers owing to the Hebraic
idioms and methods of literary presentation. The
book, however, had so great a spiritual and intellectual
impact upon our language, our prose style, and our
habits of thought, that it to some extent Hebraicized
our style, our phraseology, the shape of our sentences,
and the contour of our thoughts. We could not now
go back to paraphrase translation without serious
injury to our literature. For myself, I would much
rather see the Classics treated in the same way than
adopt the most elegant paraphrase, unless the para-
phrascr is a poet like Pope or Dryden, who builds
what is really a new poem on the old foundations.
In spite of their crudity, I have always felt much
nearer Virgil, Horace, and Caesar in Dr. Giles's
egregious cribs than in much more smooth, scholarly,
and elegant translations where the object is to try

222 THE RIVER OF LIFE

to get an exact reflection of the thought in scholarly
English. Take, for example, the following passage
from the Sixth Book of the Mncid (Systeme Giles) :

' The Cumaean Sibyl sings her dreadful mysteries
from her inmost shrine, in such words, enveloping
true things in obscure ones, and bellows in the cavern :
Apollo shakes those reins over her raving, and directs
excitements under her breast. As soon as her fury
ceased, and her raging mouth was at rest, the hero
iEneas begins : " No form of troubles, O virgin,
arises new or unexpected to me ; I have anticipated
and have gone through all things beforehand with
myself in my mind. I pray one thing : the gate of
the infernal king is said (to be) here, and the dark-
some lake (formed) by overflowing Acheron, that it
may happen (to me) to go to the sight and the pres-
ence of my dear fathers ; that thou teach the way
and open the sacred doors. I snatched him away on
these shoulders through flames and a thousand pur-
suing weapons, and rescued him from the midst of
the enemy. Him having accomplished my path
(though) infirm, I bore with me.'

So rises the Virgilian fountain from the turbid
reservoir of what Dr. Giles himself calls : ' Construed,
with the text, into English, literally and word for
word.'

The passage I have ' recovered ' from the crib of
childhood's unhappy hours may seem ' impossible '
to the mind of elegance, but I do not see why it should
not be enormously improved by some person with a
real knowledge and feeling for the English language.
Persons working on these principles might give ver-
sions of the Classics which, though they might seem
uncouth at first, would after a certain time educate
readers into the Latin attitude of mind. In the case
of Greek writers, there would be comparatively little
difficulty. Greek is a reasonable tongue, and there

THE ART OF TRANSLATION 223

is no standing on one's head and painting with one's
toes as in the best Latin prose.

In Eastern languages the system of word substitu-
tion answers admirably. I remember a translation
of the Bustan of Sadi, i.e. The Rose Garden, made
in English in Calcutta in the year 1800, which, though
odd in places, brings you infinitely nearer to the poet
than do the regular Persian scholars. I think it
possible, though I admit it does not seem likely, that
one would be able to read even Jami if he were treated
by substitution. Hafiz, again, is a good field for the
substitutor. It is also conceivable that, if Welsh and
Gaelic poetry were firmly treated in this way, their
attractions might be increased. What an autumnal
rose for the later phases of Mr. Lloyd George's career
would be a new version of the Mabinogion ! Could
there be a fitter task for the Cincinnatus of Churt and
Criccieth ? Lord Haldane might follow suit with a
new Ossian in vers libre — unless Mr. Ian Macpherson
should regard that as poaching.

Before I leave the subject of translation I must
allow myself one more flower from Selden's wonderful
Hortus Siccus. It is as follows :

c The English Translation of the Bible is the best
Translation in the World, and renders the Sense of the
Original best, taking in for the English Translation
the Bishops' Bible as well as King James's. The
Translators in King James's time took an excellent
way. That part of the Bible was given to him who
was most excellent in such a tongue (as the Apocrypha
to Andrew Downs) and then they met together, and
one read the Translation, the rest holding in their
hands some Bible, either of the learned Tongues, or
French, Spanish, Italian, etc. If they found any
fault, they spoke ; if not, he read on.'

224 THE RIVER OF LIFE

MATTHEW ARNOLD

ISth January 1924. — Matthew Arnold when in
London in the 'fifties lived in my Square, i.e. Chester
Square, and at No. 2. It is just opposite the library
in which I write these words, and when he looked out
of his window he must have seen mine. He was a
wonderful critic of men, races, and nations as well as
of poetry. Could anything be better than this
diagnosis of the French temperament ? It was written
in a letter from Provence after he had been seeing
Nimes, Aries, and Avignon :

' The French build beautifully, a thousand times
better than we do — but in all they do, and they are
doing a wonderful deal, there is something " coquet "
in the grace and beauty which is utterly beneath the
Roman dignity — which is quite Gaulish, in the spirit
of that very clever people for whom many centuries
ago Caesar, who beat them so soundly, had evidently
with all his appreciation of their cleverness so deep-
rooted a contempt. But they have improved since
that time with all the mixture of race they have had,
and are certainly now a very wonderful people,
though not the least Roman. Their prosperity and
improvement is wonderful — the state of cultivation
of this south of France, the exquisite order and per-
fection of its vast olive and vine crops, strike eyes
even as ignorant as mine — and the one thing the
people desire is to carry on this material improvement
without anarchy and at the same time without any
restoration of feudalism. You ask me whether they
are attached to the present government ; they are
sincerely grateful to it for having restored order — I
saw to-day at Aries on the Roman obelisk an inscrip-
tion to Louis Napoleon with the simple words, " II
vous a sauve de l'Anarchie ' — which you may depend
upon it expresses the sincere feeling of the industrious

MATTHEW ARNOLD 225

classes. But above all, the French peasant (who feeds
the army and is the real power of France) sticks to
this man and is disposed to maintain him because he
is the symbol, after all, of that final breach with the
past and with a feudal aristocracy, by means of which
the peasant has become a personage and which he is
firmly resolved shall never be filled up. In his mind
both branches of the Bourbons are connected with the
revolutionary system, and that is why they are both
antipathic to him. And there is a good deal of
truth in the French peasant's view ; Louis Napoleon
is as little connected with the past as the French
peasant — he has the ideas of the modern world in
which he was long knocked about in a way in which
the members of the old royal races — our Queen or the
Emperors of Russia and Austria — cannot have them
— in a way in which even the old aristocracies cannot
have them. His uncle had them too, and was a man
of genius which this man is not — but he went off his
centre with success and dashed himself to pieces.
But you may depend upon it that it is a mot of the
first Napoleon's which is now inspiring this second
Napoleon — that the sovereign who put himself at the
head of the cause of the peoples of Europe would be
the master of the future.'

Of course, there is some wrong-headedness, but
there is also great insight here. Incidentally, this
same letter contains a memorable contrast between
Lord Lansdowne, to whom Matthew Arnold had been
private secretary, and the great Lord Derby, the
Rupert of debate. Lord Derby, according to Matthew
Arnold, is c the true type of the British political noble-
man— with eloquence, high feeling and good intentions
— but the ideas of a schoolboy.'

This passage about British statesmen suggests
another passage in a letter written from London in
1849, which runs as follows :

' More and more I think ill of the great people here :

p

226 THE RIVER OF LIFE

that is, their two capital faults, stupidity and hardness
of heart, become more and more clear to me. Their
faults of character seem to me, as I watch the people
in the park, to be the grand impairers of English
beauty. In the men certainly ; for the faces of the
handsomest express either a stupid pride, or the
stupidity without the pride, and the half-alive look of
many pretty faces among the women, so different from
the southern languor, points to something very like
stupidity. And a proud-looking Englishwoman is the
hardest-looking thing I know in the world. So I
should not be sorry to get away, but I still accustom
myself to feel that we should pity these people rather
than be angry with them. I do not think any fruitful
revolution can come in my time ; and meanwhile,
thank God, there are many honest people on earth,
and the month of May comes every year. . . . Good-
bye ; this is rather a sombre letter, but I have not
breakfasted and it is 11 J, which is perhaps the reason.
I have many poetical schemes, but am fermenting
too much about poetry in general to do anything
satisfactory. My last volume I have got absolutely
to dislike.'

Matthew Arnold was often accused of being too
much inclined to find virtues in the great classical
writers and defects in those of his own country ; but
this is not a true bill — witness the following passage
of profound literary wisdom in regard to his own
classical play, Merope :

' There is a kind of pity and fear (Kotzebue is a
great master of it) which cannot be purified, it is the
most agitating and overwhelming, certainly, but, for
the sake of a higher result, we must renounce this.
Pity and fear of a certain kind — say commiseration
and awe, and you will perhaps better feel what I
mean — I think Merope does excite — as does Greek
tragedy in general ; I allow, however, that the problem
for the poet is, or should be, to unite the highest

THE CHINESE WAR BOOK 227

degree of agitatingness on the part of his subject-
matter, with the highest degree of control and assuage-
ment on the part of his own exhibition of it — Shake-
speare, under immense difficulties, goes further in
this respect than the Greeks, and so far he is an
advance upon them.5

In a passage near this he drops a very curious
remark about the conventional ideas entertained as
to the treatment of women by the Greeks. ' The
influence of women in Greece was immense.5

THE CHINESE WAR BOOK

ISth January, 1924. — I have been reading the
Chinese War Book, a work till lately the recognized
text-book for Chinese students of Strategy. Yet it
was written by Sun Tzu a generation before Aristotle
had Alexander the Great as his private pupil !

I remember Lord Morley once quoting to me with
sardonic approval an old saying to the effect that
three things were of importance in a speech or a
book : ' What was said ; How it was said ; and Who
said it? And he added : ' These three things are
always placed in inverted order. The most important
thing is, Who said it ; the next, The manner in which it
was said? What was said, i.e. the subject-matter,
which the virtuous public is generally inclined to
regard as the essential, only came off third best. In
the case of Sun Tzu and his Art of War, Lord Morley5s
rule as to relative importance should certainly be
applied.

I think I can best explain the kind of man that Sun
Tzu was, by calling him the first Staff College pro-
fessor ever let loose upon a wondering world. He, if
any one, was half Don, half Major- General. We do
not know a great deal about Sun Tzu's life and work,

228 THE RIVER OF LIFE

except that he was very masterful, very opinionative,
in fact a thorough- going, drill-sergeant schoolmaster,
and further that the kings and dukes and statesmen
whom he influenced seem to have been thoroughly
dominated by his powerful will. He practised upon
them the first principle of the Art of War, i.e. c making
your will prevail over that of the enemy.'

Though we have no very fixed and definite informa-
tion as to the rise of Sun Tzu to eminence, we have,
as so often happens in the East, one or two very
striking and detailed stories about this amazing
military philosopher. One of these, which shall be
given in detail, is, I venture to think, one of the very
best military stories in the world, not only for its extra-
ordinary entertainment, but for the admirable way
in which it illustrates some of the first principles of
military training.

If I were a live American journalist and expert in
the contrivance of captions or ' cross-headings,' I
should put over this story : ' " Form fours " in the
Harem.' But before I give the story I want to assure
all who may read these pages that this is no invention
or fairy tale of mine. Strange as it may seem, it is a
literal and serious translation from the works of the
earliest biographer and commentator on Sun Tzu
and his book. The learned commentator in question
is not out to tell a picturesque yarn, but to make one
realize the enormous importance which Sun Tzu
attached to barrack- square drill as the foundation
of military excellence, and how thoroughly he instilled
the principles of discipline into the mind of a great
king. The king in question, Ho Lu, King of Wu,
found it necessary to establish an army. Professor
Sun Tzu undertook to organize it. Like the true
military professor and bureaucrat he was, Sun Tzu
began by preparing an elaborate Memo, which he

THE CHINESE WAR BOOK 229

handed to the King. Whereupon the King, Ho Lu,
said to him : ' I have carefully perused your thirteen
chapters. May I submit your theory of managing
soldiers to a slight test ? ' Sun Tzu replied : ' You
may.' Ho Lu next asked : ' May the test be applied
to women ? ' The answer was again in the affirma-
tive, so arrangements were made to bring one hundred
and eighty ladies out of the palace.

c Sun Tzu divided them into companies, and placed
one of the King's favourite concubines at the head
of each. He then bade them all take spears in their
hands, and addressed them thus : "I presume you
know the difference between front and back, right
hand and left hand ? " The girls replied : " Yes."
Sun Tzu went on : " When I say c Eyes front,' you
must look straight ahead. When I say c Left turn,'
you must face towards your left hand. When I say
c Right turn,' you must face towards your right
hand. When I say ' About turn,' you must face
right round towards the back." Again the girls
assented. The words of command having been thus
explained, he set up the halberds and battle-axes in
order to begin the drill. Then, to the sound of drums,
he gave the order, " Right turn." But the girls only
burst out laughing. Sun Tzu said : "If words of
command are not clear and distinct, if orders are not
thoroughly understood, then the general is to blame."
So he started drilling them again, and this time gave
the order " Left turn," whereupon the girls once more
burst into fits of laughter. Sun Tzu said : " If words
of command are not clear and distinct, if orders are
not thoroughly understood, the general is to blame.
But if his orders are clear, and the soldiers neverthe-
less disobey, then it is the fault of their officers." So
saying, he ordered the leaders of the two companies
to be beheaded. Now the King of Wu was watch-
ing the scene from the top of the raised pavilion ; and
when he saw that his favourite concubines were about

230 THE RIVER OF LIFE

to be executed, he was greatly alarmed and hurriedly
sent down the following message : " We are now quite
satisfied as to our general's ability to handle troops.
If we are bereft of these two concubines, our meat and
drink will lose their savour. It is our wish that they
shall not be beheaded." Sun Tzu replied : " Having
once received his Majesty's commission to be general
of his forces, there are certain commands of his
Majesty which, acting in that capacity, I am unable
to accept." Accordingly, he had the two leaders
beheaded, and straightway installed the pair next in
order as leaders in their place. When this had been
done, the drum was sounded for the drill once more ;
and the girls went through all the evolutions, turning
to the right or to the left, marching ahead or wheeling
back, kneeling or standing, with perfect accuracy
and precision, not venturing to utter a sound. Then
Sun Tzu sent a messenger to the King saying : " Your
soldiers, sire, are now properly drilled and disciplined,
and ready for your Majesty's inspection. They can
be put to any use that their sovereign may desire ;
bid them go through fire and water, and they will not
disobey." But the King replied : " Let our general
cease drilling and return to camp. As for us, we have
no wish to come down and inspect the troops." There-
upon Sun Tzu said : " The King is only fond of words,
and cannot translate them into deeds." After that,
Ho Lu saw that Sun Tzu was one who knew how to
handle an army and finally appointed him general.
In the west, he defeated the Ch'u State, and forced
his way into Ying, the capital ; to the north, he put
fear into the States of Ch'i and Chin, and spread his
fame abroad amongst the feudal princes. And Sun
Tzu shared in the might of the King.'

Could that be beaten for grimness, picturesqueness
and ironic quaintness, and neatness of narration.
It is strikingly characteristic of the Chinese, and of
the way in which Oriental autocracy generally is
tempered by all kinds of rules and regulations, which

CARLYLE AS A HUMORIST 231

nobody seems to dare to break. The King, having
given his commission and trusted this tiger-hearted
pedant with a particular piece of business, did not
dare to interfere with the course of its despatch, even
though the results were personally so painful. Indeed,
the position of the poor man reminds one of the
widower in the immortal drawing by Charles Keene,
which his biographer tells us was refused by Punch.
At a wife's funeral the undertaker gives certain
specific orders. The husband is told that he must go
in the same carriage as the deceased's mother. The
poor man does not dare to disobey, but as he departs
he wails : ' Well, if you insist, I suppose it must be
so ; but all I can say is, you have entirely spoiled my
day.' Poor Ho Lu's domestic happiness was in a
similar way sacrificed on the altar of ' Left turn.'

So much for the personality of Sun Tzu. Nothing
could bring him more clearly before us than the
mournful story of the poor ladies who thought they
were playing at c Puss in the Corner,' and found they
were caught in the iron gin of militarism. At re-
hearsals of private theatricals or of some big public
ceremony I have seen similar ineptitudes attempted
by fashionable ladies, and have felt how much the
proceedings would have been shortened and improved
by a taste of Sun Tzu's methods.

CARLYLE AS A HUMORIST

20th January 1924. — I lately came on a series of
extracts from Lord Houghton's Commonplace books.
He was an unrivalled collector of good things, and he
specially appreciated the human side of Carlyle. He
clearly realized that the author of Sartor Resartus was
at heart not a philosopher or a historian, or even a

232 THE RIVER OF LIFE

prophet, but a great humorist — one of the happiest
of comic reliefs on the World's stage. Here are some
of his sayings recorded by Monckton Milnes :

c If Christ were to come to London now, He would
not be crucified. Oh no ! He would be lionised,
asked out to dinner to hear the strange things He
had got to say, and the bettermost people would
wonder that a man who could be so sensible on some
points should be so foolish on others, would wish He
were a little more practical, and so on.'

6 Conversation with Ranke is like talking to a
rookery.'

c Cameron showing us an idealised portrait of
Schiller, Carry le merely said, " He was a man with
long red hair, aquiline nose, hollow cheeks, and
covered with snuff." '

' Charles Knight makes of himself a terrible ladle
of twaddle to mankind.'

c I know no guilt like that of incontinent speech.
How long Christ was silent before He spoke ! and how
little He then said ! '

' If Beelzebub were to appear in England, he would
receive a letter from the Secretary of the Manchester
Athenaeum, as Eugene Sue did, requesting the honour
of his interesting company, and venturing to hope for
an address.'

6 Keats is a miserable creature, hungering after
sweets which he can't get ; going about saying, " I
am so hungry ; I should so like something pleasant." '

' Shelley is always mistaking spasmodic violence
for strength. I know no more " urned " books than
his. It is like the writing of a ghost, uttering infinite
wails into the night, unable to help itself or any one
else.'

c Never write what you can say, and never say
what you can write.'

' Cobden is an inspired bagman, who believes in a
calico millennium. He is always praising America to
me. I said to him, " What have the Americans done

CARLYLE AS A HUMORIST 233

but beget, with unexampled rapidity, twenty millions
of the greatest bores on the face of the earth ? " '

' Poor Guizot ! There he sat in his garret, full of
high thought and fine theories, and visited sometimes
by divine lights, and then comes the devil and tempts
him with Secretaryships of State and Presidency of
the Council, and such like, and leads him on and on
into lies, and filth, and darkness, and then all at once
lets him go, and down he falls into infinite night. I
quite approve of Carnot not wanting education for
Parliamentary men. He will thus get fewer of the
inane, conceited, sniggering apes of the Dead Sea we
have in ours.'

1 1 cannot stand Disraeli trying to force his Jewish
jackass cries on the world.'

Lord Houghton's Commonplace books contain a
great deal more than conversations. Sometimes they
are a diary of current events. The following, for
example, are rough memoranda written down at the
time of Louis Philippe's deposition. They afford
some excellent stories :

4 The Queen of the French praying so much in her
flight that Louis Philippe said he was obliged to be
crying out, " Mrs. Smith, on ne prie pas tant en
voyage " '

8 Louis Philippe saying, " A National Guard is like
a tree in a flower-pot ; it looks very pretty till it
grows, and then it breaks the pot — that is, the
country — to pieces." '

8 Louis Philippe on Ireland, " C*est une maladie
incurable, mais jamais mortelle." '

' The only nervousness Lamartine showed in the
affair was when, after seventy-two hours of struggle
without sleep, he threw himself on his bed, and asked
his wife to watch by him for two hours, as he then
could sleep calmly ; which he did, and rose quite
fresh again.'

6 I to Prince Charles, " Vous autres Francais vivez

234 THE RIVER OF LIFE

par instinct" " Comme les chiens qui quelquefois
s'enr agent" '

' Louis Philippe to me at Clermont, May 27th, " I
have nothing now to look to but the long run." '

c " I cannot cure myself of punctuality." '

4 " I suppose the creatures we see in the solar
microscope tear one another to pieces for difference of
opinion." '

Here are some ' Mots ' of Sydney Smith :

4 Discussion whether Macaulay was better to hear
or read. Rogers says the former, because you need
not listen. S. S. : " Oh, I 'm for the latter, because
you can't dogs- ear and interline him and put him on
the shelf when he 's talking." '

6 On a lady sitting between two Bishops — " Her
name is Susanna, I assume ? " '

4 Some one of somebody : " He will let nobody talk
but himself." Sydney Smith : " Why, who would
if he could help it ? " '

Lord Houghton could be more than a recorder of
other men's wit. Here 's an excellent comment :

4 Sydney Smith always exercises his jokes in society
before he runs them upon paper.'

4 Sydney Smith offering to call somewhere. " We
shall be on our knees to you, if you come." " I 'm
glad to hear it. I like to see you in that attitude, as
it brings me in several hundreds a year." '

c A Bishop should marry a comely woman of a
certain age, not such a shamefully pretty girl as the
Bishop of Hereford (Musgrave) has done, who looks
himself like the waggoner that drives the heavy
waggon from Hereford to London.'

' The integumental charity that covers so many sins.'

4 Having some articles charged at the Custom
House, asking under what head : " Unmentioned
articles." 44 I suppose you would, then, tax the
Thirty-Nine." '

4 In the country I always fear that creation will
expire before tea-time.'

JEREMY TAYLOR AND WIDOWS 235

' At Combe Flory I am always in the condition of
saying with Scripture, " Go into the village over
against you, and straightway ye shall find an ass." '

' No railroad will be safe till they have made a
Bishop in partibus.'

' Asked to dinner at the Duchess's when engaged
to Whitbread, writing, " Dear Duchess, sorry I can't ;
engaged to the fermentarian." Misdirecting the letter
to Wr., who was furious.'

c Calling the railroad whistle " the attorney," as
being suggestive of the shriek of a spirit in torment.
" You have no right to assume that any other class of
men is damned." '

' In a wet summer, using the anti-liquid prayer,
Allen put up a barometer in the Vestry, and remained
there during the rest of the service to watch the
effects, but, I am sorry to say, did not find them very
satisfactory.'

* Lady Davy is blue to her very bones.'

JEREMY TAYLOR AND WIDOWS

20th January 1924. — I wrote the other day about
Jeremy Taylor. I have been given good cause to
return to him by a story which I have just read in a
book on Chinese Porcelain. It is one of the best
stories in the world :

1 A Chinese philosopher was passing through a
burial-ground when he saw a young and prepossessing
lady, dressed in white (the Chinese mourning colour),
sitting beside a newly-made grave which she was
fanning vigorously with a fan. He went up to her
and said, " Madam, you interest me very much ;
will you tell me why you are fanning the grave ? "
The lady scowled at him and made no reply, where-
upon he repeated his question, saying, " I ask out of
no idle curiosity, for I am a philosopher and student

236 THE RIVER OF LIFE

of human nature, and your action interests me
immensely." The lady again scowled at him and
said nothing ; so he walked on. As he was passing
a bamboo grove hard by, a Chinese servant came out
of it and plucked him by the sleeve, saying, " I saw
you speaking to my mistress just now and I feel sure
you were asking her why she was fanning that newly-
made grave. The reason is this : my mistress and
my master, who died a fortnight ago, were passion-
ately devoted to each other. When my master was
on his deathbed, my mistress wept and said, c If you
die, I swear I will go into a nunnery.' My master
replied, ' Swear not that.' My mistress then said,
4 Well, if I do not go into a nunnery, I swear I will
never marry again.' My master replied, ' Swear not
that, but if you must swear, swear that you will not
marry^ again until the sods on my grave are dry.' " '

The reason why it reminds me of Jeremy Taylor
will be obvious to all students of the most literary of
Divines. Jeremy Taylor translated, and I had almost
said gloated over, the story of the Ephesian widow in
Petronius. He seems, indeed, to have had a constant
desire, like Mr. Weller, senior, to talk about widows.
He is never happier than in a widow story. For
example, he tells with great gusto and charm the
story of Leporina, who resolved to carry out a mutual
suicide with her husband. This is what happened.
8 It was agreed, and she temper'd the poyson and
drank the face of the unwholesome goblet, but the
weighty poyson sunk to the bottome, and the easie
man drank it all off and died, and the woman carried
him forth to funerall, and after a little illnesse which
she soon recovered, she enter'd upon the inheritance
and a second marriage.' But, of course, the great
widow passage is the description of the Ephesian
widow of Petronius transferred by Taylor to his Holy
Dying with the utmost felicity of thought and Ian-

JEREMY TAYLOR AND WIDOWS 237

guage. It is very well known, but it is so exquisite
that I cannot forbear to quote it :

' The Ephesian Woman that the Souldier told
of in Petronius was the talk of all the town, and the
rarest example of a dear affection to her husband ;
she descended with the corps into the vault, and there
being attended by her maiden resolved to weep to
death, or die with famine, or a distempered sorrow ;
from which resolution nor his, nor her friends, nor the
reverence of the principal Citizens, who used the
intreaties of their charity and their power, could
perswade her. But a souldier that watched seven
dead bodies hanging upon trees just over against this
monument, crept in and a while stared upon the silent
and comely disorder of the sorrow ; and having let the
wonder a while breath out at each other eyes, at last
he fetched his supper and a bottle of wine with purpose
to eat and drinke, and still to feed himself with that
sad prettinesse. His pity and first draught of wine
made him bold and curious to try if the maid would
drink, who having many hours since felt her resolu-
tion faint as her wearied body, took his kindness, and
the light returned into her eyes and danced like boyes
in a festival : and fearing lest the pertinaciousness of
her Mistresse sorrows should cause her evil to revert,
or her shame to approach, assayed whether she would
endure to hear an argument to perswade her to drink
and live. The violent passion had layd all her spirits
in wildnesse and dissolution, and the maid found them
willing to be gathered into order at the arrest of any
new object, being weary of the first, of which like
leaches they had sucked their fill, till they fell down
and burst. The weeping woman took her cordial
and was not angry with her maid, and heard the
Souldier talk, and he was so pleased with the change,
that he who first lov'd the silence of the sorrow was
more in love with the musick of her returning voice,
especially which he himself had strung and put in
tune : and the man began to talk amorously, and the

238 THE RIVER OF LIFE

woman's weak head and heart was soon posses se
with a little wine and grew gay, and talked, and fell
in love, and that very night in the morning of her
passion, in the grave of her husband, in the pomps of
mourning, and in her funeral garments, married her
new and stranger guest. For so the wild Forragers
of Lybia being spent with heat and dissolved by the
too fond kisses of the Sun, do melt with their common
fires, and die with faintnesse, and descend with motions
slow and unable to the little brooks that descend from
heaven in the wildernesse ; and when they drink they
return into the vigor of a new life, and contract strange
marriages ; and the Lionesse is courted by a Panther,
and she listens to his love, and conceives a monster
that all men call unnatural, and the daughter of an
equivocal passion and of a sudden refreshment : and
so also was it in the Cave at Ephesus : for by this time
the souldier began to think it was fit he should return
to his watch, and observe the dead bodies he had in
charge ; but when he ascended from his mourning
bridall chamber, he found that one of the bodies was
stoln by the friends of the dead, and that he was fallen
into an evil condition because by the laws of Ephesus
his body was to be fixed in the place of it. The poor
man returns to his woman, cries out bitterly, and in
her presence resolves to die to prevent his death, and
in secret to prevent his shame : but now the woman's
love was raging like her former sadnesse, and grew
witty, and she comforted her souldier, and perswaded
him to live, lest by losing him who had brought her
from death and a more grievous sorrow, she should
return to her old solemnities of dying, and lose her
honour for a dream, or the reputation of her con-
stancy without the change and satisfaction of an
injoyed love. The man would fain have lived if
it had been possible, and she found out this way
for him, that he should take the body of her first
husband, whose funerall she had so strangely
mourned, and put it upon the gallows in the place
of the stoln thief.'

STORY-TELLING. THE HERODOTUS WAY 239

What a piece of writing ! There is so much of the
sympathy of comprehension and so little cynicism that
I may without offence call it a story of innocence.
How delightful is the picture of the soldier feeding
himself with that ' sad prettinesse ' and of how the
maid's eyes ' danced like boyes in a festival.' Plea-
sant, too, and without offence in its context is the
phrase c she comforted her souldier.'

STORY-TELLING. THE HERODOTUS WAY

21st January 1924. — I wonder whether the art of
concise and yet moving narration, and so of anec-
dote, can be taught. If it can, and if it is not a
question of being born, not made, then undoubtedly
one of the best possible models would be Herodotus.
He is admittedly the best story-teller in the world.
Yet, at the same time, he is never long-winded and
never prosy. There is charm, no doubt, in the long-
drawn legends with which the Celtic and also the
Scandinavian races liked to bemuse themselves, but
Herodotus has no use for this sort of thing. He has
1 the human touch,' quite as strongly as any New
York reporter, but he never overdoes his descriptions
either material or spiritual. He just gives you the
essence. In truth, he was a great journalist — a great
reporter. He could write up almost anything from
a pyramid to a paradox in metaphysic, and make what
the profession in New York call a ' story,' and a very
good story, out of almost anything. Take, for example,
the exquisite and deeply moving tale of the child of
Labda. It is the kind of copy which rarely reaches a
newspaper office, but which, when it does, emotional-
izes everybody from the editor to the office boy :

c As soon as the child of Labda was born, the

240 THE RIVER OF LIFE

Corinthians sent ten of their number to the village
where Eetion lived, with the purpose of killing the
child. They duly reached Petra, and going into the
court of Eetion's house asked for the baby. Labda
had no idea of their intentions, and thinking that they
were acting from goodwill to its father, brought the
child and put it into the arms of one of them. Now
they had agreed on the road that the one who first
received the child should dash it to the ground. But
it happened by a divine chance that the child smiled
at the man who took it ; and he, noticing it, was
overcome by pity, and could not bring himself to
destroy it. So he gave it to the second, and he to
the third, till it passed through the hands of all the
ten, and none of them would destroy it. Then they
gave the child back to its mother and went outside.
There they stopped at the gate, and began to blame
and reproach each other, particularly the one to
whom the child had been first given.'

What a story ! — and curiously enough one which
might happen any day on the Albanian and Greek
frontier, or in Morocco. I remember hearing an
appropriate tale when I was in Tangier thirty years
ago. In order to stop a vendetta which had got
beyond tolerance, a whole family were slaughtered.
When they came to the baby in arms, who was very
rickety, one of the women of the killing tribe called
out, ' Leave that child alone. Don't you see that
God has doomed him ? You must not forestall God.'
So the baby was saved and grew up a strong man.
When he was twenty, some one told him his story,
and then the vendetta passion fell on him, and he
took to the hills to avenge his own people. And so
the old feud began again. But I cannot write like
Herodotus, even if I had as good a story to tell.

Note that, though Herodotus is so concise, there
is no parade of the quality, — no jerkiness in the style,

IRONY 241

no elimination in order to suggest terrific compres-
sion. Indeed, the manner of presentation appears to
be perfectly leisurely and almost dull. When one reads
a sentence like ' They duly reached Petra, and going
into the court of Eetion's house asked for the baby,'
one's first impulse is to say, ' How unnecessary to
put it like that ! Any fool could have saved ten or
twelve words here, and given the sense just as well.'
And yet the telling of the story benefits enormously
by there being no appearance of hurry. Because
there is no sense of being hurried, you have no sense
of the narration being inadequate, and no wishing that
the author had spared you a little more time, and so
given you a little more enjoyment. You go away
from these twenty lines perfectly satisfied, and feeling
that it is one of the most moving and most human
anecdotes in all literature. It might be amusing and
useful if the instructors in the Schools of Journalism
here and in America would set it to their pupils, with
instructions to write the same story shorter and
better. If any one went near succeeding, he should
immediately be given a post of not less than five
thousand dollars a year ! He would be worth every
penny of the salary.

IRONY

29th January 1924. — I am told that I myself — and
still more this Diary — am too ironical. I would to
Heaven this were so, for Irony in its true sense is a
divine gift. It is the mark of a spirit who sees far
and also sees clearly, who feels deeply the sense of
tears in mortal things, but sees also that kindly, that
divine humour in the universe which so often recon-
ciles man to his destiny, while it appears to mock him.
This was the true Eironeia of Socrates, of Greek

Q

242 THE RIVER OF LIFE

Tragedy, and also of those later thinkers to whose
inspiring genius the name of ' Romantic Irony ' has
been given. He who would understand Irony in its
noblest and truest sense must banish from his thought
all idea of the pseudo-irony of later times. He must
forgo that degraded sense of the word which makes
Eironeia a smirking and satirical jade, with a hard,
cruel laugh. Instead he must think of her as wearing
that gentle smile of pity and humour, which teaches
but does not deride, which redeems the human heart
from its most profound discouragements, which may
bring a remedy even to those to whom has suddenly
come the dreadful revelation that things done can
never be undone, that not even the gods upon the past
have power, and that acts and their consequences are
for all time inseparable. No one, in spite of Congreve's
exquisite apostrophe, can backward tread the paths
of fate. As well might you try to float up stream in
a river. And so once again I come back to ' The
River of Life ' — a title which I adopted so light-
heartedly, nay, so conventionally. I thought I had
found what the publishers call a useful title. I soon
discovered that I had got a master, not a mere
shadow of a name. I find all roads lead to it. It
dominates and directs me at every turn. Like Hippo-
lytus in the play, its image is with me in the blaze of
noon and in the shades of night. It is the end and
it is everywhere.

A ROOSEVELT STORY

30th January 1924. — I keep politics out of this
Diary altogether ; but a friend of mine has just sent
me a story in regard to Roosevelt, which is so striking
and so characteristic, that I shall break my rule of
numbering only non-political hours and give it. It

A ROOSEVELT STORY 243

is a note of conversation which a very old and inti-
mate friend of Roosevelt's had with him between the
sinking of the Lusitania and the end of the war :

Intimate Friend. — ' Theodore ! What would you
have done if you had been President at the time ? '

Roosevelt ' What would I have done ? I
should have sent Bernstorff his passports the same
day that the advertisement was published warning
people not to take passage by the Lusitania, then I
should have sent the Secretary of War on board of
her to England.'

Here spoke the true man of action — the man who reacts
the moment he is struck morally or physically and
hits back. The little men think it enough to stand
on guard against a second blow. The big man knows
that this is only to invite a new and fiercer attack.
Either play the complete Quaker and fold your hands,
or fall on the enemy like a thunderbolt from heaven.
Brigham Young understood this. A friend asked
him whether he would really follow Scripture and
turn the other cheek to the smiter. ' Yes, I would,'
said the head of the Latter-Day Saints. ' But suppose
he hit the other cheek. What would you do then ? '
persisted the inquirer. ' Give him hell ! ' Brigham
Young knew man's nature. Different, but, at any
rate, consequential to his form of extreme pacificism
was the declaration of the Chinese Sage. ' What
would you do,' said one of his pupils, c if a man spit
in your face ? ' While • the Sage paused, an eager
youth 6 cut in ' with the answer, ' Wipe it off ! ' ' No,
no,' said the Master. ' That might tempt him to
spit again. You must let it dry on.' The Mormon
view, in my opinion, is better, but the Roosevelt view
the best. Acquiescence undoubtedly is a great
temptation to evil men. That is why we must

244 THE RIVER OF LIFE

punish. If we do not deter, we unquestionably
tempt, or even incite to crime. But our deterrent
punishment must be absolutely divorced from revenge,
and must also be as far as possible reformatory. And
so that long, low wail which rose from the island of
dying men and women which floated for a little above
the place where the Lusitania went down has brought
me to the prison door — a door which should also have
inscribed upon it, ' Blessed are the merciful.' There
is no nobler virtue.

CURRENCY

1st February 1924. My soul has been wandering
of late in the strange paths of Currency, and now a
friend reminds me how deeply and how amusingly
Pope dealt with the question of metallic currency,
gold as the standard of value, and, above all, the
uses of paper money. He starts nobly with the gold
issue :

P. You hold the word, from Jove to Momus giv'n,
That man was made the standing jest of Heav'n,
And gold but sent to keep the fools in play,
For some to heap, and some to throw away.
But I, who think more highly of our kind,
(And surely Heav'n and I are of a mind),
Opine that Nature, as in duty bound,
Deep hid the shining mischief under ground :
But when, by man's audacious labour won,
Flamed forth this rival to its sire the sun,
Then careful Heav'n supplied two sorts of men,
To squander these, and those to hide again.
Like doctors thus, when much dispute has past,
We find our tenets just the same at last :
Both fairly owning riches, in effect,
No grace of Heav'n, or token of th' elect ;

CURRENCY 245

Giv'n to the fool, the mad, the vain, the evil,

To Ward, to Waters, Chartres, and the Devil.
B, What Nature wants, commodious gold bestows ;

'Tis thus we eat the bread another sows.
P. But how unequal it bestows, observe ;

'Tis thus we riot, while who sow it starve.

What Nature wants (a phrase I must distrust)

Extends to luxury, extends to lust.

Useful, I grant, it serves what life requires,

But dreadful too, the dark assassin hires.
B. Trade it may help, Society extend.
P. But lures the pirate, and corrupts the friend.
B. It raises armies in a nation's aid.
P. But bribes a senate, and the land 's betray' d.

In vain may heroes fight and patriots rave,

If secret gold sap on from knave to knave.

Blest paper-credit ! last and best supply !
That lends Corruption lighter wings to fly !
Gold imp'd by thee can compass hardest things,
Can pocket states, can fetch or carry kings.

A leaf, like Sibyl's, scatter to and fro

Our fates and fortunes as the winds shall blow ;

Pregnant with thousands flits the scrap unseen,

And silent sells a king or buys a queen.

Oh, that such bulky bribes as all might see,

Still, as of old, incumber'd villainy !

Could France or Rome divert our brave designs

With all their brandies or with all their wines ?

What could they more than knights and squires

confound,
Or water all the quorum ten miles round ?
A statesman's slumbers how this speech would spoil !
Sir, Spain has sent a thousand jars of oil ;
Huge bales of British cloth blockade the door ;
A hundred oxen at your levee roar.

246 THE RIVER OF LIFE

DESPERATE SAYINGS

1st February 1924. Bacon in his Essay on Revenge
tells us :

6 Cosmus Duke of Florence had a Desperate Saying,
against Perfidious or Neglecting Friends, as if those
wrongs were unpardonable : c You shall reade ' (saith
he) ' that we are commanded to forgive our Enemies ;
But you never read that we are commanded to forgive
our Friends'

To call this ' a Desperate Saying ' is a good example
of Bacon's dialectical skill. No man ever put things
under their proper headings in properer fashion than
he. There are cynical sayings, worldly sayings, evil
sayings, and false sayings, but none of these descrip-
tions exactly covers the ground covered by the
description ' desperate ' — the sense of despair in
mortal wisdom.

Of these Desperate Sayings, ever since I found that
passage in Bacon, I have been a diligent collector.
They are well worth the expenditure of a good deal
of industry. The first thing to be noted about them
is that they are rare. The field of search, however,
is as long as the ages and as wide as mankind. They
repay the collector just as do examples of rare plants
or butterflies.

One of the next best to Bacon's title-roll aphorism
is Walpole's saying as to Prime Ministers. I quote
from memory, but there is no doubt about its authen-
ticity. It is one of the sayings recorded by the Prime
Minister's son in his letters, and not only recorded,
but also defended. What Walpole said was : ' There
should be very few Prime Ministers. It is not good
that many people should know how bad men are.'

DESPERATE SAYINGS 247

There, indeed, is a Desperate Saying. Walpole's
celebrated remark that ' he only knew one woman
who would not take money, and she took diamonds,'
though it comes very near, is not quite a Desperate
Saying. It is rather a piece of satire. The same
objection may be taken to Walpole's comment on
the men who were bullying him in the House of
Commons : ' All those men have their price.' It
is true, however, that the way in which this House
of Commons aphorism is usually quoted, ' All men
have their price,' is a proper example of a Desperate
Saying. The insertion of the word ' those,'
by making it a charge against a particular set of
political opponents, takes it out of the Baconian
category.

A much nearer approximation to a Desperate
Saying, though this one charms rather than makes
the blood turn cold, is the alleged saying of the Prime
Minister of one of the Dominions a couple of genera-
tions ago. The Minister in question was offered a
large bribe. He indignantly refused it, but almost at
once resigned. When asked by a friend why he had
resigned at a moment when he had done so fine an
act, he is alleged to have replied, ' They were getting
too near my figure.'

A deeper and more tremendous example of a
Desperate Saying is that of Halifax : ' Men must be
saved in this world by their want of faith.' At the
same time, it is not quite so desperate from Halifax
as it would have been from anybody else. So com-
plete was Halifax's devotion to esoteric Whiggism,
that he regarded faith to be a form of Zealotry. But
Zealotry was as a thing which would make no treaties
or compromises, and so was a sure guide to destruc-
tion. The man of faith was bound for a fall. The
man who had a reasonable want of faith was pre-

248 THE RIVER OF LIFE

vented from rushing down the hill and breaking his
head at the first stumble.

Another admirable example of the Desperate
Saying which, by the way, often has in it an observa-
tion of some dreadful or inexplicable or horrible fact
in connection with human nature rather than a
theory, is the following : ' The dependence of a great
man upon a greater is a subjection which lower men
cannot easily comprehend.' That is a very un-
pleasant fact, and one not, as a rule, well understood.
Yet it is one which must have struck every one who
has been an observer of public affairs at first-hand.
In times of stress and difficulty, and when the crude
facts of life stand out in all their nakedness, this dis-
agreeable truth is strangely patent. Almost next
door to this saying is one not, strictly speaking,
desperate, but so able and conclusive that one is
tempted to quote it : 6 Popularity is a crime from
the moment it is sought. It is only a virtue where
men have it whether they will or no.'

Another really good example of the Desperate
Saying is Halifax's reflection : ■ A man that could
call everything by its right name would hardly pass
the streets without being knocked down as a common
enemy.' Here is a passage from that greatest
anatomy of human character ever conceived by the
wit of man, Halifax's character of Charles n. There
is a whole nest of Desperate Sayings in the little
chapter recounting Charles n.'s conduct to his
Ministers :

' He had at least as good a Memory for the Faults
of his Ministers as for their Services ; and whenever
they fell, the whole Inventory came out ; there was
not a slip omitted.'

As to the dangers to be suffered from Ministers
turned out of office, Halifax indulges in a reflection

DESPERATE SAYINGS 249

which we may feel sure has been the guiding star of
many opportunist Prime Ministers :

* A Minister turned off is like a Lady's Waiting-
Woman, that knoweth all her Washes, and hath a
shrewd guess at her Strayings : So there is danger
in turning them off, as well as in keeping them.'

Finally, Halifax tells us that Charles's ' humour
of hearing everybody against anybody kept those
about him in more awe than they would have been
without it.'

A man who on one occasion at least came very
near to Halifax in a Desperate Saying, drawn from
life, was the great Lord Mansfield. Here is a story
about him preserved by Wraxall, which is worth
recording in full :

' Sir J. Macpherson was asked by Lord Mansfield
what he thought of Mr. Pitt. " I think, my Lord,
that he is a great minister." " Ah, Sir John," re-
joined the judge in his peculiar voice, " a great little
minister. Did you ever hear, Sir John, of a minister
prosecuting another minister ? Would a great minister
have suffered Mr. Hastings to be arraigned ? "
" Justice may have required it," said Sir John.
" Justice, Sir John ; what is political justice ? Who
is she ? Where is she ? Did you ever see her ? Do
you know her colour ? Her colour is Blood ! I
have administered justice for forty years, but that
was justice between man and man. As to justice
between one minister and another, I know not what
it means." '

Though at first Mansfield's view of political justice
seems somewhat cryptic, it has only to be considered
a little to be understood. We have seen plenty of
such examples of political justice in recent times. If
the colour was not actually blood, it has sometimes
been very near it.

250 THE RIVER OF LIFE

NAPOLEON AT ELBA

9th February 1924. — Here is an entertaining account
of an interview which a travelling Englishman had
with Napoleon at Elba in 1815. The traveller in ques-
tion was Lord Ebrington, the eldest son of Lord
Fortescue. Lord Ebrington, who, by the way, was
fascinated by Napoleon and thought him handsome,
was a bit of a wit. Here is an excellent specimen of
his manner of narration. It is to be found in Lady
Franklin's Life :

' He (Napoleon) spoke of the Bourbons. He had no
antipathy to them ; he might have poisoned them all
in England, but he would not do it. But they were
not calculated to be popular with a people like the
French. Madame d'Angouleme, he had heard, was
plain and awkward. " II fallait pour l'ange de la paix
du moins une femme spirituelle ou jolie." " The King
of England is a very good man, but he hates me."
" Certainly," said Lord Ebrington, " he has never
spoken well of you but once, when you had changed
your wife. ' He has done a good thing,' he said. ' Oh
that I could change Charlotte.' " "I never wished
to conquer England or to be at war with her. I like
the English." " It does not appear," replied Lord
Ebrington, " else how came you to make all our poor
travellers prisoners. What harm had they done
you ? " '* And how came you to make my poor
merchants prisoners before the declaration of war ?
I cared as much for my merchants as you for your
travellers." He said that he understood English,
though he did not speak it, and had all the English
papers. Lord Wellington was equal to any of his
generals, if not superior. " I believe it is now pretty
well acknowledged that I am the best general in
Europe, yet I make ten mistakes a day. Ten" he
repeated, holding up his fingers. Marmont's treachery

NAPOLEON AT ELBA 251

to him was his final destruction. When he arrived at
Paris and found it shut against him, he turned to
Marmont, whose intentions^he had heard of, andjsaid,
" I hear, Marechal, you are to turn against me." He
denied it firmly and the same night he set off. He
believed he should have succeeded but for this.
Moreau, a brave man, he had great regard for, but he
was spoilt by his marriage. He loved his brother
Lucien very much ; he was the cleverest of all his
brothers, but they quarrelled about his marriage. . . .
He denied poisoning the wounded at Jaffa. " But
there were a few, ten or twelve, wounded men whom
I was obliged to leave there. The physicians had a
consultation as to what was to be done with them, for
they could not be moved, and the Turks are very cruel
to prisoners, scooping out their eyes and torturing
them in various ways. I said I would give no opinion,
but if it were myself I should prefer taking a little
opium to such a death. I asked how long they might
live. They would hardly survive twenty-four hours
was the answer. I said I would wait twenty-four
hours. When the time was expired there were still
two or three alive." Lord Ebrington asked how he
came to remain six weeks at Moscow, which proved his
ruin. " I consulted the thermometer records for the
last thirty years, during all which period the frost had
only twice set in within three weeks of the time it did
that year. I don't object to being sent to England,
but I won't go to St. Helena alive. The English
newspapers say but one thing which is true of me,
that I am writing my history. I am doing so." '

The young Englishman, we may note, ended up his
conversation in a really delightful vein, which once
again shows how permanent is our type. We can
imagine a young Englishman from the University, if
he could get to Petrograd, talking just in this style to
Lenin or Trotsky :

1 " I thought I should find you very stern and

252 THE RIVER OF LIFE

severe," he said to Napoleon at the end of their talk.
The Emperor's reply was characteristic. " Yes ! the
world does not know me. I am thought very violent,
but I am not at all so naturally ; I have been obliged
to feign it to awe people. My portraits have never
expressed my real character. They all represent the
Emperor, not Napoleon." '

In fact, not a wolf but a lamb ! ! !

MORE DESPERATE SAYINGS

12th February 1924. — Lately I gave some examples
of Desperate Sayings. Here is another batch noted
by me at various times. Now I have got the habit,
they rise from the pages of the Memoirists like larks
from the furrows.

Strange as it may seem, Dickens, who had in him a
real touch of eloquence and might have been a great
orator as well as a great humorist, once came very
near to a Desperate Saying of high rhetorical quality.
Jefferson's strange mixture of Jacobin political prin-
ciples and a private life which exposed him to the
accusation of being a Sultan with a black seraglio is
said to have called forth from Dickens the following
terrible apothegm : ' He dreamed of Liberty in the
arms of a slave.'

Very near to a Desperate Saying, but not quite, was
Dryden's tremendous distich which begins : ' Not
even the Gods upon the past have power.'

As may be imagined, Napoleon's essentially anti-
moral character coupled with a cynical regard of the
world, and also with his love of those short sharp
sayings which, as Bacon noted, c fly abroad like darts,'
made him say many desperate things. Perhaps the
most conspicuous is the answer which he gave to the

MORE DESPERATE SAYINGS 253

Commissioners engaged in drawing up the Code
Napoleon. They asked him whether any penalty was
to be inserted in the Code for marital infidelity. His
answer was to wave the whole thing away with an
indifferent hand — ' U Adulter e — c'est une affaire de
Canapes.''

Shakespeare, though himself so little of a cynic, had
often occasion to put desperate things into the mouths
of his characters, if and when his story or the interpre-
tation of character required them. Perhaps one of the
most terrible of these is the saying of the serving-man
in Coriolanus in regard to peace. It will be remem-
bered that, at the feast which is being prepared by
the Volscians to commemorate the peace with Rome,
one of the servitors remarks to another how terrible
are the evils of peace. The second servitor replies :
4 This peace is nothing but to rust iron, increase
tailors, and breed ballad-makers.' To this the first
servitor adds the soul-shaking comment : ' Ay, and
it makes men hate one another.' That is desperate
enough in all conscience, but we are not sure that the
comment of the third servitor is not even more
desperate : c Reason : because they then less need one
another.'

Compare Bacon's dread c Psalm of Life ' :

1 Wars with their noise affright us. When they cease
We are worse in Peace.'

Some of the sayings of Shakespeare about death are
desperate. Perhaps the most poignant is that in
Cymbeline, where the jailor says to the optimistically
inclined prisoner in the condemned cell : ' Your death
has eyes in 's head then ; I have not seen him so
pictured.'

A French example of a Desperate Saying which I
have included in my collection is the mot fatal of

254 THE RIVER OF LIFE

Barnave. When, as he believed, or pretended to
believe, far too much fuss was being made about the
killing of Foulon and Berthier, he asked the question,
' Le sang qui vient de se repandre etait-il done si
pur ? ' — ' Was this blood now shed so marvellously
pure that you make such a rout about it ? '

A peculiarly Desperate Saying is that which Bacon,
in perhaps the most brilliant of his non-scientific
writings, quotes from Plato — the hopeless saying of
the Cretan Clinias. Socrates and his interlocutors
were talking of just the sort of things we talk of now
— of peace and how to insure it, of the interaction of
the interests of States great and small, and generally
of what we now call internationalism. And then the
Cretan cuts in with a thought so chilling, yet so
plausible, that it is difficult to avoid the feeling,
' Perhaps, after all, what the wretch says is true.'
Here is Bacon's version of the conversation :

' Clinias the Candian, in Plato (i.e. in The Laws),
speaks desperately and wildly, as if there were no
such thing as peace between nations, but that every
nation expects but his advantage to war upon another.
But yet in that excess of speech there is thus much
that may have a civil construction, namely, that
every state ought to stand upon its guard, and rather
prevent than be prevented. His words are : " That
which men for the most part call peace, is but a naked
and empty name ; but the truth is, that there is ever
between all estates a secret war." '

It is clear that even the cold and callous heart of
Bacon was perturbed by the horrible aphorism of
Clinias, for he keeps on turning it over in his mind
and trying to find a means for rejecting the conclu-
sion of the Cretan. It is curious also to note in
regard to this Desperate Saying, that only one other
thing is known of its author. According to Jowett,

MORE DESPERATE SAYINGS 255

he stands forth in another part of the Dialogues as
the apologist of the unnatural practices which defaced
the social life of the Greeks.

Goethe said, incidentally, as might be expected,
one or two desperate things, even when he was trying
to be specially pious and virtuous. Take, for example,
the following as to conscience :

c The man who acts never has any conscience ; no
one has any conscience but the man who thinks.'

There is a saying of the poet about Timon, which
is evidently desperate, though I confess it is difficult
to get the exact meaning :

i Some one asked Timon about the education of
his children. " Let them," he said, " be instructed
in that which they will never understand." '

Take again, in this context, two remarks which
have nothing to do with each other except juxta-
position :

' There are many men who fancy they understand
whatever they experience.' c The public must be
treated like women : they must be told absolutely
nothing but what they like to hear.'

Perhaps the following is not actually a Desperate
Saying, but it is an important one :

' People have to become really bad before they
care for nothing but mischief, and delight in it.'

Another of Goethe's aphorisms is very near the
point of Desperation :

' It does not look well for Monarchs to speak
through the Press, for power should act and not talk.
The projects of the Liberal Party always bear being
read : the man who is overpowered may at least

256 THE RIVER OF LIFE

express his views in speech, because he cannot act.
When Mazarin was shown some satirical songs on a
new tax, " Let them sing," said he, " as long as they
pay." '

I may make here an interrogatory suggestion. Are
there not a certain number of idiomatic riddling
sayings like the oracles, which, because they may be
read in one or two ways, are desperate, or at any
rate have that quality of desperateness that they
alarm our minds even though we do not understand
them ? A capital example is afforded by poor Monte-
zuma's last words, ' The Gods are athirst.' It is not
susceptible of any exact interpretation. Yet it repre-
sents most poignantly the agony of the poor man who,
till the Spaniard came, honestly thought he was a
God himself and acted as a God. But this is a subject
that would carry me too far.

One of the most terrible of all Desperate Sayings
is that which Fletcher put into the mouth of Valen-
tinian when the woman whom the Emperor so vilely,
so cruelly, and so tyrannically wronged tells him in her
agony that she will appeal to Justice. He answers
her with the dreadful arrogance of the man in whose
iron hand the awful precepts of the Roman Code
had clenched ' the thunders of the law ' : c Justice
will never hear you. I am Justice.' (' Voluntas
principis vigorem legis habet — The will of the Sovereign
has the force of law.')

I have kept as my last Desperate Saying one from
a source which seems not merely unlikely but impos-
sible. It was uttered by a Middle- Victorian humorist
who addressed himself chiefly to the middle - class,
and was in his own person one of the most virtuous
and respectable of men, the inventor of Mrs. Caudle's
Curtain Lectures ! — Douglas Jerrold. The saying
was published during the Socialistic ferment of the

THE ROMAN EMPERORS 257

'forties : ' Ah yes, we 're all brothers now — all Cains
and Abels.'

As a postscript, I think I have succeeded in collect-
ing the most Desperate Saying of all. No doubt
its desperateness is amazingly enhanced by the
dreadful primness of the language, and by the fact
that the man who perpetrated it was Samuel Taylor
Coleridge, and that he perpetrated it in his old age,
only some eight years before his death. One feels
after reading it that the ' slightly damaged arch-
angel,' as Lamb called him, must have been very
badly damaged somewhere, and damaged quite early
and never repaired.

1 To be feminine, kind, and genteelly dressed, these
were the only things to which my head, heart, or
imagination had any polarity, and what I was then,
I still am.'

THE ROMAN EMPERORS

1st March 1924. I expect that there are many
discoveries yet to be made by the general reader
among Greek and Roman authors. We hear a great
deal about the ' high ' people, but very little about
the minor prophets. Now I shrewdly suspect that
the scholars have on a punctilio been keeping us
from a great many delightful and charming books
with their sneers about the Silver or even the Brass
Age. When I hear some man of learning say that a
book is ' unreliable ' or ' written in vile Latin,' or
that it shows ' signs of decadence from the best
standard, as regards both thought and language,' I
suspect that it is very likely some charming gossipy
book which I am being censored out of by a gram-
marian. That is a thought which fills my mind with
rage and horror.

258 THE RIVER OF LIFE

I have just discovered an example of this intrigue
amongst scholars and grammarians to keep me and
a good book apart and make ill blood between us.
The immediate case is the Scriptores Augustae, or
Anecdotal Memoirs of the Roman Emperors. I had
always heard the book damned as badly written,
untrustworthy, and generally a hodgepodge of in-
exactitudes, worthy of neither credit nor attention.
When, then, Vol. I. of the three in preparation
reached me in the Loeb Library, I had no intention
of reading it. I turned up my nose at it as ' un-
worthy the consideration of the scholar and the
gentleman.' Happily a wet day, a cold in the head,
and a whimsical impulse induced me to read it. I
was transported. It is one of the most delightful,
curious, and amusing collections of anecdotes about
great men and great things that have ever been
written. Gossip it may be, but it is gossip of the
kind that makes the great people of antiquity live.
They come down from their marble pedestals and
take you by the hand. Here is the key to unlock
the pompous mysteries of the Caesars, their Augustas,
their Senators, Consuls and Praetors. You get, for
example, in touch with the real Marcus Aurelius, and
by no means to his discredit. Hadrian, with his
love of going to the tops of mountains and seeing
sunrises — an excellent gift in an Emperor — grows
human. Pertinax and Commodus cease to be names.
In fact, this whole crowd of half-Emperors and
quarter-Emperors become, not shadows and phantoms,
but people very much alive.

Scattered up and down are admirable epigrams and
pregnant sayings. I will take only two examples :
that of the Emperor who instituted small dinner
parties and formulated the proposition : ' Seven make
a dinner; more make a din.' The Latin is quite as

THE ROMAN EMPERORS 259

neat to the ear as the English. Take, too, the
Desperate Saying of Hadrian, who remarked (doubt-
less with an imperial sigh) that precautions against
usurpers were of little avail. ' No man can kill his
successor. '

Then the intimate pictures, like that of Septimus
Severus, the shrewd lights on Faustina, the delicate
problem of the bringing up of Princes, and the awful
paradox that great men are almost always succeeded
by ' duds ' or scoundrels. I have absolutely covered
two pages at the end of my copy of the Scriptores with
the numbers of pages on which there is something
specially good, and there is hardly room for another
entry. On the next re-reading I shall have to take
refuge on the title-page.

Before I leave this amazingly delightful book I feel
I must quote a passage on the two eternal questions
which haunt alike the palace, the house in Westbourne
Terrace, the eight-roomed villa and the cottage.
Those are : (1) the best education for the children ;
and (2) the hot-water system and the baths. The
description of the teaching of Commodus Antoninus
under the directions of Marcus Aurelius and what it
led to, is one of the bitterest pieces of satire, though
not so intended, that was ever written. After the
death of Antoninus, Marcus Aurelius tried to educate
Commodus, not only by his own teaching — poor
scholar, poor teacher — but also by employing the
greatest and best of men and experts alive in the
Empire. In Greek literature, as in Latin, Commodus
had the noblest and the ablest of masters. Such are
the facts. Here is the comment of ^Elius Lampridius :

1 However, teachers in all these studies profited him
not in the least — such is the power, either of natural
character, or of the tutors maintained in a palace.

260 THE RIVER OF LIFE

For even from his earliest years he was base and dis-
honourable, and cruel and lewd, defiled of mouth,
moreover, and debauched. Even then he was an
adept in certain arts which are not becoming in an
Emperor, for he could mould goblets, and dance and
sing and whistle, and he could play the buffoon and
the gladiator to perfection. In the twelfth year of
his life, at Centumcellae, he gave a forecast of his
cruelty. For when it happened that his bath was
drawn too cool, he ordered the bathkeeper to be cast
into the furnace ; whereupon the slave who had been
ordered to do this burned a sheep-skin in the furnace,
in order to make him believe by the stench of the
vapour that the punishment had been carried out.'

Another wonderful description is that of Pertinax,
of whom we are told that he was so mean that ' before
he was made Emperor he used to serve at his banquets
lettuce and the edible thistle in half-portions.' We
seem here to reach the very abysm of dietary squalor.
Foreign hotels please do not copy ! Another of his
peculiarities is worth recording. Even after he was
made Emperor, ' he never ate pheasants at his own
banquets or sent them to others.' What he did with
them does not appear ! Perhaps nobody ever gave
him any, and he was too little of a sportsman to shoot
his own coverts. But then he was not one of the
Emperors who lived in the grand style. Quite the
contrary. As the writer of his anecdotal history says,
4 he did not wish to seem other than he really was,'
which was a rather punctilious, fussy, close-fisted
little business man :

' On the other hand, he was so stingy and eager for
money that even after he became Emperor he carried
on a business at Vada Sabatia through agents, just as
he had done as a private citizen. And despite his
efforts, he was not greatly beloved ; certainly, all who
talked freely together spoke ill of Pertinax, calling him

MUSIC AND THE UNMUSICAL 261

the smooth-tongued, that is, a man who speaks affably
and acts meanly. In truth, his fellow-townsmen, who
had flocked to him after his accession, and had ob-
tained nothing from him, gave him this name. In his
lust for gain, he accepted presents with eagerness.'

MUSIC AND THE UNMUSICAL

16th March 1924. — The first thought of the man who
has no sense of music is to keep his mouth shut after
he has been to a musical performance. I am told,
however, that a sincere statement of the impact of a
performance like that of Parsifal on a non-musical
mind might be of some interest to musical people. I
shall attempt, therefore, to set down some of the
thoughts that crowded my mind when I heard Parsifal
for the first time. So might a colour-blind man write
on Turner or any other great colourist. Such a view
would admittedly be curious.

I do not feel called upon to deal with the scenery,
dresses, and general decor, except to ask in wonder
why it should be a Wagnerian tradition, as apparently
it is, to mark a situation as specially emotional by
painting everything ginger colour, whether it be the
sky or the flowers that bloom in enchanted gardens.
But if the scenery is bad, what are we to say of the
story itself ? To speak frankly, its effect upon me is
one of wearisomeness and disgust. The handling of
the whole situation is tactless, tasteless, senseless,
soulless. The Arthurian legend, though too often
spoilt by the Celtic faults of dimness and essen-
tial inhumanity, has in itself much that is noble and
stimulating. But what can be said for this German-
silver, electro-plated version of the story of the Grail ?
There is no nature and there is no art, no true mystery,

262 THE RIVER OF LIFE

no divine illusion, only a glitter of machine-made
magic.

But, after all, what does scenery or story or plot
or literary handling matter here ? The music is the
thing, and that seems to me wholly inspired, wholly
divine, a faultless, flawless work, rising higher and
higher, and showing everywhere that absolute cer-
tainty of touch, that harmony not merely in the
musical but in the highest sense, which marks all great
achievement in the arts. It moves throughout with
' pomp of waters unwithstood.' Like some mighty
river it sweeps every obstacle, every criticism before
it. You feel that the composer not only wrote from
a full heart, but from a full mind, and that he had
complete control over his material, He was never
' finely touched ' but to ' fine issues,' never had to
rely upon rhetoric to eke out invention, or upon con-
vention to supply the place of imagination. He rules
everywhere a king. All the gates open before him,
and every head is bowed. It is possible that Wagner
does not do everything that his hearers may want or
ask, but he does what from the point of view of a
work of art is more important — he does exactly what
he himself wants. There is no pity, no sense of tears
over an artistic tragedy, no sense of failure. The
perfection of the music is almost uncanny.

The non- musical man might be expected to obtain
his greatest pleasure from the vocal music. Strangely
enough, I found just the reverse to be the case. I
was most rapt into the Wagnerian heaven of sound
in the orchestral pieces, and, above all, in the Pre-
lude. There Music seemed to me to have done her
greatest, there to riot and revel, there to wave her
purple wing. Surely no nobler note of preparation
was ever sounded. In an instant one is swept away
in what one must not call a storm of emotion — for

MUSIC AND THE UNMUSICAL 263

storm denotes violence, and here was nothing of
stress or heat or friction, but only the rolling back of
mists and the opening of windows into the empyrean ;
only what may quiet us in a scene so noble. All that
one had ever thought, or heard, or dreamt, or imagined
of the pageantry, of the pomp, of the sensuous emotion
of religion is concentrated and refined into an elixir of
sound. The glory of all cathedral chants, of all sweet
singing in the choir, of all the space and majesty of
architecture have come together, and all the arts upon
which they relied have been fused into one pathetic
magnificence. The emotions that crowd in on the mind
as one enters from the sunlight into the gloom of the
Duomo at Milan, the jewelled glories of St. Mark's, the
stone miracle of Amiens, the lucent beauties of the
Sainte Chapelle, the vast spaces of St. Peter's, and
all the thousand associations of English ministers
and cathedrals, are here blended and refined. Inter-
laced with them are the inspirations that centre in the
services of some village church in England with its
grey walls set in the greenery of a Somerset or Devon
landscape, and where the elms and yews bend benign
over the swelling graves. But one wrongs the
musician by talking too much of such glories. He
goes to the heart as well as travels along the radiant
surface. There is plenty of room, too, for the thought
of the singing in some humble Welsh or Cornish
chapel. From that by an easy transition one passes
to the memory of those ' who rolled the psalm to
wintry skies ' or to Cromwell's Ironsides :

* Their heads all stooping low,
Their points all in a row '

as they raised their hymn to the God of battles. And
soon one realizes that such a suggestion in the music
is no accident. Across the organ-like tones and

264 THE RIVER OF LIFE

pealing anthems come the notes of war, the blare of
trumpets, the menace of thunder and eclipse. The
hosts of heaven and the powers of darkness are
engaged, and fierce is the combat. But that is only
an episode. The reverberation of trumpet and drum
and cymbal die away, and the prelude ends as it
began, in a ' solemn music,' and in the antiphons of
religion. Once more we drink the ten-times-distilled
elixir and feel the breathless rapture of devotion.
Surely never has musician succeeded more than here
in giving us the extreme characteristic impression of
the thing he wants us to feel. We are transported.
Our souls are called out of our bodies, though not
for our bale, like Kundry's. We stand discarnate in
the rays of a beatific vision.

PROBLEMS AND PERILS OF SPIRITUALISM

30th March 1924. I have been all my life a keen
student of psychical phenomena, with the result that
I have always felt compelled to maintain the middle
course. I have come to the conclusion, that is, that
the spiritualistic hypothesis has not been proved. On
the other hand, I am convinced as to the complete
failure of the materialists, and even of the true
agnostics, to overthrow, explain, or rationalize what
Mr. Balfour once called the ' odd facts ' unearthed
by psychical inquiry. These are the facts for which
we have good evidence, but which, whatever may
be their explanation, do not fit in with so-called
scientific views of the universe, — which remain, what
are so greatly abhorred by the men of science, i.e.
mysteries. The man of science, rightly enough
from his point of view, levies war on all that
is mystical. He believes that there is a reason for
everything and that the things which cannot at the

SPIRITUALISTIC PROBLEMS AND PERILS 265

moment be explained or even understood, are not
mysteries, but, instead, explainable things, though
things that have not yet been explained. Every-
thing, he thinks, has what Shakespeare called ' under-
stood relations,' or, to be more correct, ' understand-
able relations.' And here is my breaking-point. I
will make no positive assumption that everything is
understandable. I agree, of course, that if we get
better instruments of observation, or train our senses
to be better observers, we shall get more accurate
reports. Further, I feel that I cannot remain what
Prior called ' lord of his new hypothesis.' The law
of the Golden Bough teaches me that the Priest of
Science will be slain by ' the slayer who shall himself
be slain.' Therefore investigation, investigation, and
more investigation, must be the watchword. While
incommensurables and other apparent mysteries are
knocking about the world, we must go on investigat-
ing them and not be put off by such cheap answers
or arguments as those which are commonly used in
regard to psychic research. ' It is all imposture and
not worth considering.' If that had been the line
which the chemists had adopted in regard to the
alchemists, we should know precious little about
chemistry. It is nonsense in the problems of psychical
research to bring in all sorts of suggestions as to
morals and experiments being tainted by fraud. An
experiment may be spoilt by the use of dirty water
or some other impurity, but that does not make the
chemist break his test-tubes and scales, and say that
the business is too disgusting for him, and that he is
going to go out of it as quickly as he can. Instead,
he takes every precaution to prevent his experiments
being haunted by the impurities, but continues as
before to investigate.

So with psychic phenomena. We must not, because

266 THE RIVER OF LIFE

one experiment is spoilt by the impurities of fraud,
say, c We will conduct no more inquiries.' I have
been specially struck by the unscientific way in which
the question of alleged spiritual messages conveyed
in automatic writing has been treated by what I may
call the harsher scientists. They seem extraordinarily
ready to assume that, because messages purporting
to be from the dead often come to us in very twaddly
language and full of expressions of vulgar transcenden-
talism such as the alleged communicator could not
possibly have used, therefore automatic writing is
necessarily a fraud. Mr. Jones, the fastidious physi-
cist, says bitterly : ; It is quite impossible that my
old friend Ravenhead could have talked c tosh ' of
this kind. Such words and phrases would have
choked him. Therefore I refuse to have anything
more to do with these investigations.' And yet,
curiously enough, if Mr. Jones gets a cryptic tele-
phonic message about a lecture engagement and why
it had to be postponed, he does not say that the
message must be a fraud because of its ignorant and
absurd employment of technical terms. Instead he
says, c I suppose the muddle happened something in
this way. Darkshield no doubt told the man who
looks after his laboratory for him to telephone to the
College putting me off, and then the under-porter,
who had to write the message down. Being an
ass, he did not understand the reason given about
the lecture on Electrons clashing, and so between
them they produced this terrible hash. I can see quite
well, however, what old Darkshield was trying to get
through, and have made the new arrangements he
wanted accordingly.'

Though we make these allowances in real life, we
never seem willing to make them in the case of mes-
sages alleged to come from the dead. Take another

SPIRITUALISTIC PROBLEMS AND PERILS 267

analogy in ordinary life. We do not assume that the
great scholar, O'Leary, cannot have written a review
because it has three false quantities in what purports
to be a quotation from the JEneid and some rubbish
about Petronius's work on the Statisticians. It reads
like madness, but we only say that we wish he would
have his stuff typewritten before he sends it in and
then the printers would not make him the apparent
author of these absurd, grotesque blunders. It does
not occur to us for a moment that we are dealing
with a case of imposture. Surely the dismissal of
automatic writing or other messages alleged to be from
dead persons is too often founded on the assumption
that fraud can be the only explanation of blunders.
I admit the dreary folly and apparent impossibility
of quantities of these messages ; but I do want people
to try and consider scientifically, and in a reasonable
spirit, the way in which these messages reach us, or,
at any rate, are alleged to reach us.

In order to explain my view, I have tried to draw a
picture — a kind of day-dream — of the difficulties
under which communication would have to take place
in the case of the disembodied. If the dead could
stand before us in their habit as they lived and could
talk to us man to man, there should be no difficulty
in the matter. But assuming for the moment that in
fact they can only send messages through other
people, i.e. through ' mediums,' it is a very different
matter.

And here I ought to interpolate that we have no
right to lay down the way in which the dead ought to
communicate and say that if they do not communicate
in the way we think reasonable they are impostors.
We need not assume that the medium's way is the
only way, but we must not refuse to investigate it as,
per se, impossible.

268 THE RIVER OF LIFE

Before, however, I set forth my parable of communica-
tion, I must touch for a moment on the subject of identi-
fication. As far as I can see, nobody has ever thought
out exactly how we identify each other in ordinary
life. I meet Smith in the road and there is, as a rule,
no doubt or question about it being Smith. I know
his coat and I know his hat. I know the sound of his
voice, and I note as usual how untidy he looks com-
pared with what he looked in pre-war days. All the
same, it is probably not by these mechanical and
material tests that I know him, but by some kind of
aura breathed from him, whatever that may be.
Perhaps subconsciously I go through a regular process
of ratiocination — Roman nose, bald, overhanging
upper lip, slight stoop of the shoulders, and other
police description details as to appearance, voice,
and clothes, and then add the conclusion, ' In view
of the aforesaid premises I draw the inference that it
is Abraham Percival Smith and not John James
Jones.' If, however, I am deprived of these various
modes of recognition and have to obtain recognition,
not out of the timbre of a voice, or some sudden little
jerk of the head or finger, which was unmistakably
Smith's, I might find great difficulty in identifying
him. If on a totally dark road comes a distant
shout, 6 Is that you, Bill ? This is me, Smith.
I 've lost my way and turned my ankle, come
across and give me a hand,' you are very apt to
feel cold doubts as to the identity of your alleged
friend.

My next entry shall be the Day-dream in ecctenso.

A PARABLE 269

A PARABLE FOR PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATORS

Slst March 1924. — Granted that the channels of
communication are what they are, granted also that
it is impossible to express the unknown in terms of
the known, and granted further the imperfect working
of the human brain when it is subject to the shock
of personal emotion, we must not expect lucidity in
communications from the spirit world, and especially
in Automatic Writings. On the contrary, we should
naturally expect a somewhat opaque mixture.
Whether that mixture is what many people think
it is, and whether we shall learn to clarify it, or
whether it is an illusion of the brain exploited by
man's power of self-deception assisted by baser
influences, remains to be seen. But in any case,
though there are, of course, certain dangers, it is
right and reasonable to investigate the phenomena,
or alleged phenomena, as long as they are investigated
in a scientific spirit. No one proposes to stop chemical
inquiry because foolish people may poison themselves
or blow themselves up. Similarly, provided the
dangers are understood, psychic investigation ought
not to be forbidden or hindered merely because
certain psychological and moral risks attach thereto.

Let us suppose a son to have left home on an
exploratory expedition into the heart of the Andes,
an expedition accompanied by risks so great that his
family have almost given up the hope of ever re-
ceiving any communication from him again. The son,
however, survives the dangers and difficulties of his
journey and arrives safely at the capital of Bolivia.
Here he finds that an American inventor has just
perfected a new system of long-distance wireless tele-
phony, but one which it is alleged cannot at present

270 THE RIVER OF LIFE

be worked except through the inventor's two experts
at La Paz and in London. In order, that is, to get a
communication through, the would-be telephoner
must stand by the wireless expert and give him the
message, and he in turn must give it to the wireless
expert in London. The wireless expert in London
must then pass it on to the father, who has been
brought to the office to hear the message. This means
that the message would have to be conveyed in a
conversation such as that which follows : — Son to
Operator at La Paz : ' Tell my father that I am here,
and that I want him to know that I am safe and
well.' — Operator in London to Father: ' The La Paz
operator says I am to tell you that your son says he
is alive and well,' etc., etc. A simple message of that
kind is perhaps not very difficult to get through, and
is not much hindered by the method of communication.
But now suppose that the father, who has been sum-
moned to the wireless office in London, is inclined to
be somewhat suspicious of the new invention and very
doubtful whether it is really his son who is communi-
cating— suspects, in fact, that the whole thing is a
fraud. Suppose, further, that he is predisposed to
adopt this attitude because he has heard of other
people who have been grossly deceived and robbed of
money and of happiness through impostors working
an alleged invention of a similar kind. Even though
he would like beyond anything else in the world to
know that his son was alive and was communicating
with him, he would feel it necessary to be sceptical.
The very intensity of his desire to be assured of his
son's safety would make him brace himself to defeat
any idea of deception. He cannot simply accept the
statements reeled off by the two operators, but must
endeavour to get immediate proof that the communica-
tion is genuine.

A PARABLE 271

Therefore he at once clamours for something which
shall have evidential value. This, he feels, is abso-
lutely necessary. But it is just here that the trouble
of this system of communication begins. The father
demanding proof has to convey his inquiries through
the minds of the two operators, and has to switch the
interview off plain assertions on to identification lines.
But unfortunately these operators are not able to
make their own minds act automatically and like a
machine. Neither can entirely resist the temptation
to help out and improve the communication — to make
short-cuts, as they would say ; — in fine, to help the
father and son to get together. They cannot help
their own minds developing, clarifying, and improving,
and so interpreting the expressions of the man on
the other side.

Be this as it may, there is no other way but to set
going the memories of the father and of the son in
order to establish the identity of the traveller. And
a bewildering business it is.

Father to London Operator : ' Can you get him to
tell me something which, though not at the moment
known to me, is known to other people, in order that
I can verify it ? This will show that it is my son who
is talking and not an impostor. Make this quite
clear. He must say something which I shall not be
bound to regard as a mere guess.'

In these circumstances, and especially if the son
had never thought of identification proofs before, he
may very well take some incident in his life which he
has partially forgotten, or, at any rate, one where his
recollection has diverged a good deal from the recol-
lection of others, and give it in such a way that it
would distinctly suggest fraud or else total ignorance.
And even if something of real evidential value did
appear to emerge, it might easily be so much clouded

272 THE RIVER OF LIFE

by having to go through two operators to whom
the incident seemed pure nonsense that it would lose
its relevance.

But what are we to say if, after inconclusive evidence
of identity, the traveller — quite as deeply anxious to
communicate with his father as the father with him
— were next to try, by means of the distracting
mechanism we have described, to get through some
account of the strange and soul-shaking experiences
which he had undergone in his voyage of exploration ?
Suppose he had made a wonderful discovery, had
found a city inhabited by an entirely new race — a
people endowed with wonderful powers, talking a
new language, with a new scheme of thought, and
possessed of psychical powers far superior to and
wholly different in kind as well as in degree from
ours, people with a totally divergent attitude towards
life and death, and, further, who lived under different
physical conditions from ours.

He would be passionately anxious to get some
account of these wonders into his father's mind, but
at once he would be perplexed with the difficulty of
describing the unknown in terms of the known.
Ought we to be surprised if in view of these facts the
description — though it might contain one or two
unaccountable flashes — were to seem vague and
occasionally ridiculous, and if the communications
became dashed with doubt and hesitation, and often
appeared mean and absurd just where one might most
expect them to be full of moment and dignity ?

Yet surely these unsatisfactory circumstances should
not make a wise man say in a pet that he refuses to
listen to any more messages. Rather it should make
a reasonable person say that we must not expect per-
fection all in a moment from the Andean wireless
system, or look to ahalf- developed invention for a

A PARABLE 273

limpid stream of exposition concerning the wonders
of a new discovery !

The system of communication I have described in
my explanatory Parable, if not analogous in every
particular to those which take place in real life, is, I
think, sufficiently like to be of service to the investi-
gator. As a rule, there is a ' sensitive ' who goes into
something in the nature of a trance and an alleged
spirit control, or, as I should say, operator on the
other side, who purports to put messages through,
usually in the oratio obliqua, ' He says that, etc.,' but
often broken in upon by verbatim reports, ' I do wish,
Father, etc.,' this being again interrupted by sotto
voce explanatory comments by the spirit medium
— i.e. the medium at the son's end — and by inter-
larded scraps of dialogue between certain spirit
interlocutors who ' cut in.' Finally, there are apt to
be raids on the conversations by other influences on
the spirit side.

To people who have never studied the matter in
detail, this muddle may seem to lead to nothing but
a hopeless fog. Yet, curiously, out of this very muddle
come in many cases some of the most impressive
indications that we are dealing with realities and not
mere folly or fraud. One occasionally catches, or
once again let me say, since I do not want to beg the
question, appears to catch, the mediums in the spirit
world guessing at the communication which is being
made, and guessing wrong — trying to improve the
message and spoiling it. Yet all the time the friend
or relative, or other sitter, owing to the use of his
own memory and logical faculty, has been able to see
far quicker and better than the medium what the
spirit communicator is driving at.

Suppose, for instance, a spirit medium were to say :
4 He says something I cannot quite make out about

274 THE RIVER OF LIFE

a lady biting him when he was a little boy — a lady,
he says, called Smith. Do you remember it ? ' This,
of course, would sound utter nonsense to an inter-
mediary. Yet it may be the best of good sense if
Ladysmith were the name of the family dog. But
remember, though I want to make people realize how
difficult the system of communication must be if it
is to be evidential, and also how difficult if it is to
tell us of things so unknown that they cannot be
hitched on to any known thing here, without some-
thing approaching intellectual dislocation, I do
not want to be dogmatic on psychical phenomena,
or beg the question in any sort of way either for
or against. I present my little parable only to eluci-
date. At the most my plea is a motion in arrest
of judgment ! I merely ask the Court of Appeal
to delay its decision till it has weighed certain
new evidence.

< THE TIRED AUNT AND THE CURSING NIECE '

1st April 1924. — Here is a story conveyed to me
by a friend. Whether fact, fiction, or ben trovato, it is
certainly an excellent example of the way in which
children mistake and also often delightfully amplify
and beautify language that they find unintelligible.
My friend tells me that the other day a little girl
friend of his, aged five, to whom he was very fond
of reading and reciting in prose and verse, asked
him with great seriousness to tell her 6 the grand
poetry ' about 6 the tired aunt and the cursing niece.'
Bewilderment for a moment overcame him, and
he could not think how to fulfil the command, and
asked for further instructions. ' Don't you know
that " grand poetry" you sometimes tell me about

1 TIRED AUNT AND CURSING NIECE ' 275

the tired aunt ? ' And then he suddenly remembered
and began :

1 The tyrant of the Chersonese
Was freedom's best and bravest friend.'

The sonorous rhythm of c The Isles of Greece ' had
made a greater impact than the sense. It was, in
fact, the old story about ' the child she-bear.' Say
it aloud and impressively and at once Tyrant = Tired
Aunt, and Chersonese = Cursing Niece.

I daresay readers of these words will be able to
afford other examples of these attractive misappre-
hensions. I remember an old friend telling me that
as a boy when he read in ' The Acts of the Apostles '
how Agrippa and Berenice came with great pomp,
he always imagined that they came to the judgment-
seat accompanied by a large Newfoundland dog.
One of his acquaintances had a Newfoundland called
4 Pompey ' for grand, and ' Pomp ' for short.

Here again are some capital examples of that art
of getting comprehension out of the incomprehensible
in which children are such adepts.

A little girl, aged seven, came out of church one
Sunday and turned to her mother and said, c Mummy,
what is Lork ? ' The mother did not know. Dulcie
persisted, ' What is Lork ? The clergyman says every
Sunday, " The Duck in the corner and Lork." Of
course I understand what the Duck in the corner is,
but what is Lork ? ' After deep thought came the
conclusion that c the Duck in the corner and Lork '
was ' the Duchess of Cornwall and York.' This
happened, of course, twenty years ago.

When catechizing in his parish schools, a clergy-
man once asked an intelligent little girl to recite the
Apostles' Creed, which she did correctly until — c I
believe in the Holy Ghost, the holy calico shirt. . . .'

276 THE RIVER OF LIFE

I suppose a pedant would say that the locus classicus
for these nominal misapprehensions is the passage in
Erasmus about ' Mumpsimus,' the old Priest, and the
young Priest.

THE LOVE POEMS OF JOHN DONNE

1st May 1924. — I have never understood Donne's
poems ; I have never even tried to do so. Yet when
I was an undergraduate, or even before, I used to
carry a little edition of Donne in my pocket, and shout
his verses to the woods and fields, or bombard my
expostulating friends with enigmatical couplets and
quatrains that had gone to my head like new wine.
My fellow - undergraduates, I believe, warned each
other c not to talk to Strachey about Donne. He 's
quite impossible when he gets on to Donne, perfectly
mad.' However, though my love for Donne was quite
uncritical, it was altogether genuine. In those days
Donne was little talked about — by which I mean that
there was no temptation to ' show off ' one's learning by
quoting Donne. Showing off in the 'eighties, strange
as it may sound now, consisted in knowing Rossetti's
Sonnets by heart, or in being able to expound Morris
and Swinburne at call.

Advancing years made me, I suppose, a little
ashamed of reading a poet to whose words I could
attach little or no meaning. Also journalism, the
cares of the world, and the fact that many new stars
were rising, drove Donne into the background. The
most I did was to repeat some of my favourite lines
and to prick up my ears whenever I came upon an
allusion to Donne in Dryden, in Pope, in Dr. Johnson,
or elsewhere.

THE LOVE POEMS OF JOHN DONNE 277

And now Mr. ' V. M.,' the editor of the new Donne,

* Has made the ancient torrent moan,
Although its very source be dry.'

I have re-read all the love poems in my old copy of
the 1669 edition. I find with a pride which I am
not going to conceal that, when at eighteen I marked
the poems as if for a selection, I made almost exactly
the same selection as 'V. M.' On the fly-leaf of my
book appears this momentous note :

' Poems marked thus || are beautiful throughout.
' Poems marked thus f f are marred by some piece
of bad writing.'

The only essential difference between me and
'V. M.' is that I marked as for a general anthology,
and he — or is it she ? — includes only love poetry.
For example, I left in the elegy which begins :

4 Language, thou art too narrow and too weak
To ease us now. Great sorrows cannot speak,'

and also Ben Jonson's favourite elegy, which begins :

* Not that in colour it was like thy hair.'

Again, I included, because of its delightful first line,
the curious little poem written to Ben Jonson on
6th January 1603. It is quite eighteenth-century in
its opening :

' The State and men's affairs are the best plays,
Next yours. . . .'

But I now come to a confession, which I have per-
haps staved off too long. In my new resurrectionary
festival I find myself falling back exactly into my old
bad habit of devouring indigestible poetry, unchewed.
I read Donne once more without understanding, and
yet once more with an intoxicated delight in the

278 THE RIVER OF LIFE

metrical fascination and in the indefinable charm of
the rhetoric. The lines that I loved forty- eight years
ago leap out at me from the page as if they were alive.
They and I clasp hands across the gulf of the past, just
as do friends of school and college meeting by chance
at a railway junction, in a Swiss hotel, or in the Suez
Canal. Strange as it may seem, I have not been forced
to say about a single line in Donne that for me there
has passed a glory from the verse. ' I see and I
perish ' exactly as before. Exactly as before I behave
as what a friend once called me, ' the wild beast of
literature.' I tear my prey to pieces, and in the
glorious lust of hunger do not even ask myself why I
like what I am devouring.

I must for the sake of the weaker, or, let me say,
the saner brethren, give some examples of what I
mean. Take first these exquisite lines :

* Ah, what a trifle is a heart,
If once into love's hands it come ! '

That is quite enough for me. I ask to know no more.
I well remember living on it for a month forty- eight
years ago without even bothering myself to explain
away the ridiculous end of the quatrain. I don't
suppose I ever read, and certainly was not in the least
put off by, the awful lines :

* . . . but as love draws ;
He swallows us, and never chaws.'

Such things not only never worried me, but never
even interested me.

Take next the alluring couplet :

' Stand still, and I will read to thee
A lecture, Love, in love's philosophy.'

The poem attached is, of course, very well known,
and has, I believe, got into the anthologies. It

THE LOVE POEMS OF JOHN DONNE 279

happens to be the kind of poetry now popular with
' the better vulgar ' of letters. This is the poem which
contains the pretty conceit about how the two
shadows that went up and down with the lovers in
their three hours' converse got shorter and shorter.

4 The Autumnal ' was, I think, the only poem of
Donne's that I got entirely by heart, for practically
there are no ' trip up ' lines in it, and the special
intonation or lilt given to the couplet is one which
would naturally inflame a lover of metre purely for
its own sake, as I take no shame to proclaim myself.
A similar commendation was always paid by me to
Donne's elegy to his wife. It perhaps opens as well
as any poem in the whole range of literature :

' By our first strange and fatal interview.'

This also is the poem, it will be remembered, that
contains the immortal phrase :

1 . . . I saw him go
O'er the white Alps alone. . . .'

c The Legacy,' a poem dark, dangerous, and unintel-
ligible, has two lines in it which would justify a whole
volume of dumb obscurity :

* When last I died, and, dear, I die
As often as from thee I go.'

' The Relic,' however, yields a better thrust at the
heart, and has a universal appeal :

' All women shall adore us, and some men.'

But this soul-shaking line is embalmed not in myrrh,
spikenard, and frankincense, but in a kind of literary
natron. The elegy called ' The Expostulation ' is
specially full of lines which soar up with a rush like a
rocket and explode into showers of golden rain or

280 THE RIVER OF LIFE

starlets of crimson, azure, and emerald. Take, for
example :

1 And must she needs be false, because she 's fair ? '

Here was a tip from Donne which might have set up,
and perhaps indeed did set up, a whole literary
epoch. But this throw-forward to Congreve and to
Pope in his first period is a hundred years apart from
the tremendous line :

* And the divine impression of stolen kisses.'

That is Donne's age at its very best. But what is
one to say of a couplet with which this fascinating and
intolerable poem ends :

* To like what you liked ; and at masks and plays
Commend the self-same actors, the same ways.'

And then we come back to a perfect piece of early
Elizabethanism :

* Love was as subtly catched as a disease.'

I could go on quoting for ever lines that scintillate
freely and madly between Spenser and Swinburne,
but will ration myself to five more. ' Woman's
Constancy ' is a very poor poem ; at least, so it seems
to me ; but it contains one of the most elemental
couplets in Donne, and also one of the couplets which
were destined by introducing the antithesis to affect
the whole world of English poetry :

' For, having purposed change and falsehood, you
Can have no way but falsehood to be true ? '

On the very next page in the new edition we see
Donne at work on another prophetic inspiration :

* Her whom the country formed, and whom the town.'

THE LOVE POEMS OF JOHN DONNE 281

This strikes me as being very much like Dryden trying
the mood of Browning, who, by the way, I have
always understood was a great Donneist. Take
next the superb lines with which the absurd and
frousty elegy on female inconstancy ends. There is
no poet but Shakespeare who could have so success-
fully committed such a vast and yet judicious piece
of abstract irrelevancy :

* . . . Change is the nursery
Of music, joy, life and eternity.'

Note that 6 love ' is not named. That was just the
kind of hunt-the-slipper ' quiz ' that Donne loved to
show himself. Puritan Proteus, ecclesiastical elfin,
you can never catch him ! c Love's Alchemy ' is
one of the better known of Donne's lyrics. I have
always loved it for the vague reserve of its beginning :

* Some that have deeper digged love's mine than I.'

That is the kind of line to set a young man's brain
and heart whirling. It ends, however, with a couplet
which makes one feel positively hysterical in the
context :

* Hope not for mind in women ; at their best,
Sweetness and wit, they are but mummy, possessed.'

What is one to say to this ? Is it satire ? Is it
humour ? Is it metaphysic, or ' Is it, ain't it,'
4 Nature's lay idiot ' — the phrase is Donne's own —
grinning at us, not through a horse-collar, but a
broken coffin-lid ?

But I am not going to try to be ' funny ' or do
1 clever Alex ' about Donne. As well might one chaff
a desiccated Capuchin in a crypt. I part with him
breathless and bewildered, but always his humble
servant at command.

282 THE RIVER OF LIFE

If I must, in conclusion, say something definite and
coherent about Donne as a poet it shall be this :
(1) No great poet ever wrote such bad poetry. (2) No
bad poet ever wrote such glorious poems, and so
many of them.

That is rather a mad antithesis, but it must stand
for want of something better. Just think what sort
of a poem Donne would have made out of it had he
seen it. He would probably have begun with his
mistress's petticoat or farthingale, next have hitched
his verse to a Torpedo — a fish to which he was very
partial — and then have ended up among the decaying
flesh and bones of some one who had been ' lapped in
lead,5 and turned into a kind of sepulchral clotted
cream. Sir Thomas Browne skittishly calls it ' con-
cluding in a moist relentment.'

THE ETHICS OF ADVOCACY

6th May 1924. — There is no subject which mankind
in general is more willing to talk about and more
certain to go astray over than the Ethics of Advocacy.
They will have it that, when you brief a barrister,
you brief him to tell lies and to do his best to deceive
the judge and the jury, and that he is a man hired,
as often as not, to defeat the ends of justice. Of
course, this is all rubbish. What the advocate does
is to help a man to put his case as well as he can
before the judge, and let the judge decide whether
he was in the right or in the wrong, whether his
conduct was justified or not, and again, whether, if
wrong, it was still excusable. Now it is obviously
right that these points of view about any human
transaction should always be heard and considered.
A man excited, or bewildered, or stunned by a great
accusation cannot, as a rule, put these various points

THE ETHICS OF ADVOCACY 283

of view effectively for himself. He must have some one
skilled in the world's affairs and in the presentation
of facts to help him. But those who make such a
presentation through the arts of Advocacy must live,
and therefore must be paid. The essential thing
about Advocacy is that everybody knows that it is
Advocacy and is paid for, and that it is only a putting
of ' the other side ' under observation and with proper
limits. Advocacy, if it was not known to be Advocacy
and paid for, would, no doubt, be a very dangerous
and misleading thing, because it would not be dis-
counted as it properly is when it is professionalized.

But necessarily the profession of Advocacy has
rules and regulations of its own, and often demands
considerable sacrifice. Brougham in one of his
speeches, made when he was Counsel for Queen
Caroline in the proceedings on the King's Divorce
Bill, put some of the duties of the advocate with
extraordinary poignancy. As a rule, he was much
too diffuse and exaggerated a speaker for his oratory
to live in the printed page, but the following passage
is a really remarkable piece of declamation as well
as of dialectical philosophy. There is something very
fine in the way in which Brougham insists that the
advocate's duty to his client is all-absorbing, and
that there can be no excuse for not carrying it out to
the full.

' The cause of the queen does not require recrimina-
tion [pause] at present. ... If, however, I shall
hereafter think it advisable to exercise that right —
if I shall think it necessary to avail myself of means
which at present I decline using — let it not be vainly
supposed that I, or even the youngest member in
the profession, would hesitate to resort to such a
course, and fearlessly perform my duty. I have
before stated to your Lordships — but surely of that

284 THE RIVER OF LIFE

it is scarcely necessary to remind you — that an
advocate in the discharge of his duty knows but one
person in all the world, and that person is his client.
To save that client by all means and expedients, and
at all hazards and costs to other persons, and among
them to himself, is his first and only duty ; and in
performing this duty he must not regard the alarm,
the torments, the destruction which he may bring
upon others. [Here Brougham paused once more,
drew himself up, and in a voice of intense earnestness
proceeded.] Separating the duty of a patriot from
that of an advocate, he must go on reckless of con-
sequences, though it should be his unhappy fate to
involve his country in confusion.'

This, of course, is in many respects the language of
exaggeration, but there is an underlying truth. The
reference in regard to recrimination was aimed at
George iv. Brougham let it be known that if the
Queen's past was raked up too much, he would
insist on raking up that of the King. It being known
that Brougham contemplated this, he was told that
it might bring on a revolution and so forth, and the
passage I have just quoted is the reply to this attempt
to make him limit his advocacy.

POPE ON THE BROAD CHURCH VIEW

10th May 1924. — It is very amusing to note how
sceptical Roman Catholics like Pope and Gibbon
disliked the Broad Church point of view. Pope in the
Dunciad gives in regard to them the most poignant
piece of satirical, anti-latitudinarian, theological criti-
cism which is to be found in our literature :

* Be that my task (replies a gloomy Clerk,
Sworn foe to myst'ry, yet divinely dark ;
Whose pious hope aspires to see the day
When moral evidence shall quite decay.

LORD HALIFAX THE TRIMMER 285

And damns implicit faith, and holy lies ;
Prompt to impose, and fond to dogmatize) :
Let others creep by timid steps, and slow,
On plain Experience lay foundations low,
By common sense to common knowledge bred,
And last, to Nature's Cause thro' Nature led.
All-seeing in thy mists, we want no guide,
Mother of Arrogance, and source of pride !
We nobly take the high priori road,
And reason downward, till we doubt of God :
Make Nature still encroach upon his plan ;
And shove him off as far as e'er we can :
Thrust some Mechanic Cause into his place,
Or bind in Matter, or diffuse in Space :
Or, at one bound o'erleaping all his laws,
Make God man's image ; man, the final Cause ;
Find Virtue local, all Relation scorn,
See all in self, and but for self be born :
Of nought so certain as our Reason still,
Of nought so doubtful as of Soul and Will.
O hide the God still more ! and make us see
Such as Lucretius drew, a God like thee :
Wrapt up in self, a God without a thought,
Regardless of our merit or default.'

LORD HALIFAX THE TRIMMER

1st June 1924. — Here is an inscription which I have
long desired to place upon the base of a monument
dedicated to the memory of Lord Halifax. The
monument is to be erected at the end of a woodland
walk near my house. On a mound of turf will stand
the memorial urn. Thus the earth and the grass of
England will combine to commemorate one who
wrote of them with such passionate feeling.

In case one sentence in the proposed inscription
which follows may seem too cryptic, I ought perhaps
to say that ' just even to Injustice enthroned ' alludes

286 THE RIVER OF LIFE

to Halifax's apology for Charles n. and the marvellous
sympathy of comprehension shown in his celebrated
' character ' of that monarch. 8 He could not stoop
to Cruelty and Bloodshed ' refers to the action he
took during the Titus Oates Conspiracy and the Rye
House Plot. To his eternal credit, he pleaded with
all the force at his command for the victims both of
Titus Oates and of the Counter- Terror, incurring in
each case the suspicion of those in power at the
moment :

TO

THE PIOUS AND IMMORTAL MEMORY

OF

George Savile, Marquess of Halifax.

The most Inspired of Politicians and of Wits.

Passionate only in his Patriotism

He trimmed the ship of State against the violent inclinations

alike of the Evil and the Good,

The Ignorant and the Learned.

He sought and found Moderation in the throes of

Revolution and could be just even to

Injustice enthroned.

Yet he knew that nothing could be built upon a

foundation of Paradox.

He could not stoop to Cruelty and Bloodshed

Even when it seemed that out of these would come

That National Safety which he most desired.

He thought of Justice even more than of Policy.

For Proof of the love he bore to England, look on the Right
hand of this Mound and read of that Earth and of those spires
of English grass which here commemorate him.

For Proof of his ample and luciferous mind, read on the Left,
and note well what he told his countrymen of the one thing
needful.

THE AGE OF INNOCENCE 287

On the right-hand stone, let into the mound of earth
supporting the urn, I mean to inscribe the celebrated
passage on ' The Spire of English Grass.' On the
other will be written Halifax's famous apostrophe to
England to preserve the Command of the Sea.

THE AGE OF INNOCENCE

1st June 1924. — There has floated down this Living
River a good deal of personal comment both in prose
and verse on Fate, Free- Will, Past, Present, and
Future. I must not forget to say, however, that these
soul-shaking themes were treated by Dryden with a
mastery both in argument and in verse to which few
men, and certainly not this one, can attain. Dryden
was a born arguer. He actually had the magnificent
audacity to argue on metaphysics and theology in an
opera, and to argue very successfully. It may be
remembered that the laughter of mankind has often
been called down upon Dryden because he undertook to
make Paradise Lost popular by re- writing it in Heroic
Couplets — an offer to which Milton is grimly said to
have replied : c Let the young man tag his rhymes.'

Most people are content to laugh and leave the
story at that. If, however, they will take the trouble
to turn in Dryden's dramatic works to the poem
entitled * The State of Innocence and the Fall of Man
— An Opera,' they will find enshrined there what is
probably the best piece of serious argument ever put
upon the operatic or any other stage. Dryden was
always deeply moved, as indeed must be every human
mind, by the tremendous problem of Fate — and Free
Will — the problem which runs like a thread of dusky
gold through the warp and woof of Paradise Lost.
Following Milton, or, rather, expanding Milton, Dryden
finds his opportunity in the discussion in ' Paradise '

288

THE RIVER OF LIFE

between Adam and the ' affable Archangels,' Raphael
and Gabriel. After an exordium in which Adam
addresses the Archangels as ' Natives of Heaven,' the
argument proceeds :

Adam. Freedom of Will, of all good things is best :

But can it be by finite Man possest ?

I know not how Heav'n can communicate

What equals Man to his Creator's State.
Raphael. Heav'n cannot give his boundless Pow'r away ;

But boundless Liberty of Choice he may.

So Orbs, from the first Mover, Motion take ;

Yet each their proper Revolutions make.
Adam. Grant Heav'n could once have giv'n us liberty ;

Are we not bounded, now, by firm Decree,

Since what soe'er is pre-ordain' d must be ?

Else Heav'n, for Man, Events might pre-ordain,

And Man's Free-will might make those Orders vain.
Raphael. Heav'n, by fore-knowing what will surely be,

Does only first Effects in Causes see ;

And finds, but does not make Necessity.

Creation is of Pow'r, and Will th' Effect,

Fore-knowledge only of his Intellect ;

His prescience makes not, but supposes things ;

Infers Necessity to be ; not brings.

Thus thou art not constrained to Good or 111 :

Causes which work th' Effect force not the Will.
Adam. The Force unseen, and distant, I confess ;

But the long Chain makes not the bondage less.

Ev'n Man himself may to himself seem free,

And think that Choice which is Necessity.
Gabriel. And who but Man should judge of Man's free
State ?
Adam. I find that I can chuse to love, or hate ;

Obey, or disobey ; do good, or ill ;

Yet such a Choice is but Consent, not Will.

I can but choose what he has first design' d,

For he, before that Choice, my Will confin'd.
Gabriel. Such impious Fancies, where they entrance gain,

Make Heav'n, all pure, the Crimes to pre-ordain.

THE AGE OF INNOCENCE 289

Adam. Far, far from me be banish' d such a Thought :
I only argue to be better taught.
Tho' no Constraint from Heav'n, or Causes be,
Heav'n may prevent that 111 he does foresee :
And, not preventing, tho' he does not cause,
He seems to will that Men should break his laws.
Gabriel. Heav'n may permit, but not to 111 consent :

For hind' ring 111, he would all Choice prevent.
'Twere to unmake, to take away the Will.

Adam. Better constrain' d to Good, than free to 111.
Raphael. But what Reward or Punishment could be,
If Man to neither Good nor 111 were free ?
Th' Eternal Justice could decree no Pain
To him whose Sins it self did first ordain ;
And Good compell'd, could no Reward exact :
His Pow'r would shine in Goodness, not thy Act.
Our Task is done, obey, and in that Choice
Thou shalt be blest, and Angels shall rejoice.

(Raphael and Gabriel fly up in the Cloud : the other
angels go off.)

Adam. Hard State of Life ! Since Heav'n foreknows my

Will,
Why am I not ty'd up from doing 111 ?
Why am I trusted with myself at large,
When he 's more able to sustain the Charge ?
Since Angels fell, whose Strength was more than

mine,
'Twould show more Grace my Frailty to confine.
Fore-knowing the Success, to leave me free,
Excuses him, and yet supports not me.

(To him Eve.)

Eve. Behold, my Heart's dear Lord, how high the Sun
Is mounted, yet our Labour not begun.
The Ground, unbid, gives more than we can ask ;
But Work is Pleasure when we chuse our Task.
Nature, not bounteous now, but lavish grows,
Our Paths with Flow'rs she prodigally strows ;
With Pain we lift up our entangled Feet ;
While cross our Walks the shooting Branches meet.
T

290 THE RIVER OF LIFE

That last speech of Eve is delightful beyond words.
It shows that Dryden had humour as well as pathos
and insight. How many a time before and since has
the woman at home turned with a sigh from the endless
metaphysic of her husband and his guests to walk in
the garden, and how often has she returned to find
them still at it, for not all arguers can manage to fly
off into a real as well as a philosophic cloud !

LORD CLIVE

2nd June 1924. — Clive has always interested me
very deeply. Part of this interest has come, no doubt,
from the fact that he is the patron saint of my family.
He saved Sutton and the estate for the Stracheys, and
was always held up to me by paternal tradition as our
hero. The first Sir Henry Strachey was his private
secretary, and the two men were devoted to each
other, and Strachey ultimately married a near relative
of Lady Clive. Later he entered Parliament for one
of Clive' s boroughs, and also became Clive' s executor
and the guardian of his infant son — the man who in
later life married the heiress of the historic Powys
family and became Earl of Powys.

The striking thing about Clive from our point of
view was that, just after he had appointed Henry
Strachey as his private secretary to go out to India
with him, he heard that the Strachey estate was in
great difficulties, that Henry Strachey's father had
mortgaged it to the whole of its value, and that unless
it was redeemed by a payment of £12,000 — a great
sum in those days — it would pass in one year into the
possession of the mortgagee. On hearing this, though
he had no real experience of his new secretary, Clive,
with a splendid trust in youth and, of course, also a

LORD CLIVE 291

deep belief in the family feeling centring in an estate,
advanced the £12,000 to Strachey, declaring that he
would be able to pay it back later, which, of course, he
did. That was the kind of fine gesture which is
oftener found in novels than in real life — a trite
remark, but true.

My next good reason, though not quite so good, for
admiring Clive is that he was a master of English
prose. As has lately been discovered, he inspired
some of the greatest things in Orme, the Thucydides of
the Honourable East India Company. Very probably
the magnificent passages describing first the Black
Hole of Calcutta, then the Battle of Plassey, and
finally the overthrow of Surajah Dowlah by Meer
Jafnr were actually written by Clive. Finally, Clive
was unquestionably a great Imperial statesman and
had a marvellous flair for Asian politics.

If these are not good enough reasons for liking a
picturesque, historical character, I do not know how
liking can be bred ! After all, what can there be
stronger than the freemasonry of Style ? But if one
likes Clive, one cannot help also both liking, if also
in part detesting, Macaulay's famous essay. It will
continue to live in literature because the author was
a man of genius. But when we read and thrill, we
must never forget that it is not about the real Clive.
The figure before us is as essentially a work of art as,
say, Shakespeare's Henry v. The general impression
which we get from Macaulay, and which he deliber-
ately intended us to receive, is that of a boorish and
illiterate soldier of fortune, ill-bred and ill-read, but
saved from the disconsiderations of such a character
by flashes not only of military genius but of states-
manship and of a true sense of patriotism. Macaulay's
Clive has the coarseness of grain and the luxurious
vulgarity of the conventional Nabob. No one would

292 THE RIVER OF LIFE

gather from the essay that here was a man who in his
writing was not only scrupulously careful of the art of
composition, but possessed a natural felicity of style as
well as the magic power of conveying to paper that
passion with which his whole nature vibrated.

There is hardly any man of action who has con-
trived to put such a thrill of emotion into his phrases
as Clive did. It is on record that Chatham, who
listened to one of Clive's speeches, declared that ' it
was one of the most finished pieces of eloquence he
had ever heard in the House of Commons.' But in
truth this declaration was hardly wanted. One has
only to read the speech in question to recognize its
extraordinary force and fascination. There is no
excuse for any suggestion that Clive was indebted to
the help of others in the composition of his speeches,
for his letters and despatches, of which happily we
have a vast supply, are filled with passages equally
eloquent, pregnant, and ; luciferous.' Take as an
example Clive's description of the physical miseries
from which he suffered. In one of his last letters to
my great-grandfather, the first Sir Henry Strachey,
his ' most devoted comrade and friend,' he writes,
' How miserable is my condition ! I have a disease
which makes life insupportable, but which my doctors
tell me won't shorten it one hour.' These are words
that pierce the heart and are somehow clothed with
an emotional force beyond their functions and their
offices — their mere grammatical meaning. Take again
the phrase in one of Clive's later letters to his father,
in which, when asking to be remembered to his mother
' in the most affectionate manner,' he adds : ' She has
acted a great part in life.' He goes on to speak of
4 the uniformity of her conduct with regard to her
children ' as her special virtue. Could a mother want
higher praise more nobly expressed ? Were there

LORD CLIVE 293

uniformity of conduct in all parents, how many family
tragedies should we avert ! Take again these words
in a letter to Strachey written in 1772, words which
not only move us, but have at this moment a peculiar
appropriateness for all who desire that Give's work
for the Empire shall endure : c I will not patiently
stand by and see a great Empire, acquired by great
abilities, perseverance and resolution, lost by ignorance
and indolence.'

Here are words taken from Clive's address to the
officers who in the First Mutiny asked for more
money — words which sting like a blood-knot on a
lash : c You have stormed no town, and found the
money there ; neither did you find it in the plains
of Plassey.' But let us not for a moment suppose
that Clive in his letters was always riding the high
horse. He could be as lively as he could be severe.
We find him, for example, speaking of his chief rival
in the East India Company's Directorate as 6 Sir
Hannibal Hot Pot.' That delightful phrase is con-
tained in a letter to Orme the historian, whom Clive
kept well supplied not only with letters, memoranda,
and speeches, but with plans and drawings. It is
indeed one of Sir George Forrest's most memorable
discoveries in his Life of Clive, that the soldier
statesman was the power behind the pen of Orme.

No doubt Orme was endowed by nature with a
remarkable gift of style, but it is extraordinarily
interesting to find how much he owed to the direct
inspiration of Clive. Fastidious as was Orme in the
written word, he would often adopt whole pages of
Clive's ' material to serve ' with only the slightest
of verbal alterations. All that minute history of the
early transactions at Arcot and on the coast of Coro-
mandel is now seen to have been derived directly
from the principal actor, Captain Clive. Yet no one

294 THE RIVER OF LIFE

ever detected that the stately march of Orme's in-
imitable historic prose — a prose medium essentially
more distinguished than that of either Gibbon or
Johnson — was diluted by some inferior strain. Who
would gather from Macaulay that the subject of his
essay was a man who could not only think and act,
but write as well as — or, in my opinion, a great deal
better than — the great Chatham himself ?

AN EPISTOLARY GEM

Srd June 1924. — Here is a supplement to what I have
already written about Give's prose style. He was an
admirable letter writer. Perhaps the best and most
perfect example is to be found in a five-lined letter
in which Clive closes his controversy with the half-
mutinous officers who tried to extract a larger share
of prize-money after the battle of Plassey — the men
at whose heads while they were mutinous he flung
the rebuke quoted above as an example of style.
When Clive stood firm, these officers made a com-
plete surrender. It was then, but not till then, that
Clive showed his magnanimity :

4 Gentlemen, — I have ever been desirous of the
love and good opinion of my officers, and have often
pursued their interest in preference to my own.
What passed the other day is now forgotten, and I
shall always be glad of an opportunity of convincing
you how much

I am, Gentlemen,

Your most obedient, humble servant,

Robt. Clive.'

MOORSHEDABAD, §tk My 1757.

ON TRANSLATING RACINE 295

Clive, following the Oriental fashion, was apt to
end his letters with the phrase : i What can I say
more ? ' What can I say more, after quoting this
perfect example of epistolary eloquence ?

ON TRANSLATING RACINE

10th June 1924. — Apropos of Racine, it is curious to
think that his Plays were not translated into English
verse in the seventeenth or early eighteenth century,
though clearly they had many admirers here. Perhaps
there was a feeling by our poets that if they wanted
to go back to the Greeks in general, and Euripides in
particular, they would not go via Paris or Versailles,
but by a direct cross-country route. I am somewhat
supported in this view by Dryden's example, and
also by the fact that, when Phaedra was put on the
stage in the last years of the seventeenth century, a
translation was made by an Oxford man, and there
was nothing said about Racine's great play. And
yet the theme evidently interested the London wits
as well as the University scholars, for Prior wrote
perhaps the most charming of his Epilogues or Pro-
logues to this Euripides revival. His lines were
spoken by the immortal Mrs. Oldfield — the great
actress whose funeral in Westminster Abbey was
attended by Voltaire, and on whom he wrote his
wonderful poem contrasting the fate of an actress in
England with that of one in France. The English
actress slept in the Abbey with kings, councillors, and
princes ; the French actress was treated as an out-
cast, or even a criminal, and buried at dead of night
in a pit without one word of blessing or of hope from
the Church.

296 THE RIVER OF LIFE

Here are the roguish words with which Mrs. Old-
field introduced Phaedra to the London audience :

* Ladies, to-night your pity I implore
For one, who never troubled you before ;
An Oxford man, extremely read in Greek,
Who from Euripides makes Phaedra speak ;
And comes to town to let us moderns know,
How woman lov'd two thousand years ago.
If that be all, said I, e'en burn your play :
Egad ! we know all that, as well as they :
Show us the youthful, handsome charioteer,
Firm in his seat, and running his career ;
Our souls would kindle with as generous flames,
As e'er inspired the ancient Grecian dames :
Every Ismena would resign her breast ;
And every dear Hippolitus be blest.'

She spoke in the character of Ismena, the counterpart
of the frigid and lachrymose Aricie in Racine's drama.
One cannot help wishing that the solemn Racine
could have been imported to London and submitted
to the bewitching glances of Mrs. Oldfield across
the footlights. What would he have made of it ?
Probably nothing except that we were barbarous
islanders, unable to understand and unfit to touch
the holy mystery of the Dramatic Unities. And
lastly, how delighted the naughty Prior, who always
saw the humour of the solemn Frenchman, would
have been at thinking that he had rubbed ' M. Hippo-
lyte,' as Dry den used to call Racine, upon the raw !
All the same, and though my natural impulse is to be
on the side of the humorous and against the solemn,
it is no good to pretend that Racine could not sound
depths in the human heart of which the sparkling
Prior not only had not the faintest conception, but
never could have had any conception. Racine's
heart may have been of stone, but he could draw
blood from it.

SEEING THE DOCTOR 297

SEEING THE DOCTOR : HIPPOCRATES AND THE
MEDICAL PROFESSION

Uh July 1924. — Seeing the doctor always has in
it a touch of the drama. You feel, not only that you
are acting a part, and either making yourself out
better or worse than you really are, — in a word,
presenting something to an audience of one, — but you
also know that the doctor himself is bound to be
doing very much the same thing. He has to act a
part. If he did not, he might fill his patient with
dismay. He must appear cool when he is anxious,
at leisure when he is hurried, happy when he is miser-
able, and, most of all, must appear to be in perfect
vigour of body and mind when he is feeling wretchedly
ill and mentally disturbed. Therefore, really, the
doctor and the patient, till they get to the actual
grips of surgery or of medicine, are parties to a little
play. This is specially the case in the sick-room and
when the patient is in bed, or sitting arrayed in
dressing-gown and slippers with all the paraphernalia
of sickness from the medicine glass to the clinical
thermometer and the temperature chart at his side,
and the nurse discreetly standing at the foot of the
bed like a kind of Medical Assessor. The experienced
doctor and the experienced patient, though they say
nothing about that either to themselves or to each
other, know in their hearts that the blue or white-
clad figure ' half withdrawn ' is probably comparing
them both with previous cases, very likely to the
disparagement of them both, or else adumbrating
generalities on life and death like the chorus in a
Greek play.

Let us be thankful that the rules of the game do
not oblige the nurse to throw incense upon some

298 THE RIVER OF LIFE

altar and sing or chant reflections upon the follies
of youth and what they lead to, on the selfishness or
the wickedness of mankind and womankind, and
generally revelling in reflections on the nature of
human beings and their follies and misdeeds, — c blind
children of the blind.'

There is no place in which the nature of the Pro-
fession, and especially of the General Practitioner,
can be better studied and understood than in the
works of Hippocrates. Also none shows us better
the Greek spirit in its completeness. They make us
realize that in the matter of pure observation the
Greek showed as much mastery as he did in abstract
philosophy, in poetry, in history, and in the figurative
arts. Other early races have noble achievements to
their credit in the exploration of special portions of
the great crypt in which mankind is interned. The
Greeks, and only the Greeks, proved themselves
supreme in every form of intellectual activity of which
men are capable. They were the greatest of all the
foundation-layers of knowledge. They seem always
to have thought the right thing in the right way.
Whatever they touched they illuminated. En-
lightenment was of the essence of their contract with
Humanity. The pre-Socratic philosophers by pure
abstract reasoning ' prediscovered ' many of the
things which the modern scientist has only arrived at
by piling Pelion upon Ossa in the titanic labours of
trial and error. Again and again the modern man
of science, the natural philosopher, the economist,
finds when he reaches the summit of the mountain
he is climbing that a Greek sent an arrow to that very
spot two thousand years before.

When Lord Armstrong, at the end of his life, came
to the conclusion that the material world was the
child of movement, and that one form of matter was

SEEING THE DOCTOR 299

differentiated from another purely by writing it in a
kind of cosmic Morse alphabet conceived in terms of
vibration, he was, after all, only saying what Anaxi-
mander had said before him. Perpetual flux,
change, and movement form the flying founda-
tions of the eloping world. We swim in a universal
whirlpool.

But it is not only the latest discoveries as to time
and space that are apt to sound like echoes of the
happy guesses of the Greeks. The economists, the
students of ethics and statecraft, find their Principia
in some golden phrase that fell, as it were, almost
unconsciously from the mouth of the Stagirite. He
showed fundamentals by the wayside in the course
of his magnificent progress to the shrine of reality —
the shrine where human society was to be accom-
modated to actuality and the laws of the Polls
justified to the self-regarding instincts of the indi-
vidual. And while this was going on from what
one may call the point of view of practical philo-
sophy, the glorious firm of ' Plato late Socrates '
was tracing eagle paths in the thrilling empyrean
of pure thought.

One would have concluded, however, that medicine,
at any rate, was free from the anticipations of the
Greek. There at least was a science which we
moderns could claim as all our own. Yet, as a matter
of fact, in respect of essential principles the Greeks
have their way with the Origins of Medicine as of
Philosophy. Hippocrates told his fellows and the
world at large that the art of medicine must grow
through the observation of the needs and diseases
of men, and not through the acceptance of vague
generalizations, rigid hypotheses or pedantic assump-
tions. Though Hippocrates was not allowed the
freedom of dissection, and in many other ways his

300 THE RIVER OF LIFE

observation was checked, so accurate were his
observations of the symptoms of disease that in
many respects they have never been bettered.

Hippocrates describes the look of the countenance,
the patient's position in bed, the movements of his
hands, and a dozen other aspects of suffering, and
compares them with those of the body in health. ' A
sharp nose, hollow eyes, collapsed temples ; the ears
cold, contracted, and their lobes turned out ; the
skin about the forehead being rough, distended, and
parched ; the colour of the whole face being green,
black, livid, or lead- coloured.' Hippocrates after
the dread inventory tells us that such a face, unless
it can be at once accounted for by some special
reason, like want of food or sleep, shows that the
patient will surely die. This is the famous fades
Hippocratica.

Who was it, I wonder, who told Shakespeare, or
was he using traditional sources, when he makes Mrs.
Quickly tell us of Falstaff s end. ' His nose was as
sharp as a pen.' The description of unfavourable
signs to be read from the patient's position in bed
are very curious and, I believe, correct. ' Lying upon
his back, with hands, neck, and legs extended,' is
bad. So is wishing to sit erect at the climax of the
disease, especially in pneumonia, and also c waving
his hands before his face, or hunting as if gathering
bits of straw or picking the nap from the coverlet.'
' For after I saw him fumble with the sheets, and
play with flowers, and smile upon his fingers' ends, I
knew there was but one way,' says Shakespeare's
Hostess.

All this is wonderful, but perhaps even more
wonderful is the fact that Hippocrates should have
seen so clearly what was the ethical and civic duty
of the physician to his patient and to the public at

SEEING THE DOCTOR 301

large. He put the whole system into that physician's
oath which cannot be bettered even now.

One of the first things in the oath is the promise to
make no concealment of the practice and knowledge
of the healing art, but to pass that knowledge on to
others. It is true that these others must be bound
by an oath to act according to the law of medicine ;
but this stipulation was inserted, as will be seen
from the context, not to make a caste rule nor to
create a monopoly, but to prevent the practice of
medicine from falling into the hands of impostors and
exploiters — persons who were not bound by the oath
to consider first and above all ' the benefit of the
patient.' Next comes the item of the oath under
which the physician is bound to act the part of a
gentleman and a good citizen during his daily
practice :

' Into whatever houses I enter, I will go into them
for the benefit of the sick, and will abstain from every
voluntary act of mischief and corruption.'

There follows an equally important obligation upon
the man who sees his fellows so intimately, as does the
doctor, in the stress of pain, in the weakness of disease,
in the agonies of bereavement, in the reflex action of
sorrow and remorse :

' Whatever, in connection with my professional
practice or not in connection with it, I see or hear, in
the life of men, which ought not to be spoken of
abroad, I will not divulge, as reckoning that all such
should be kept secret.'

Hippocrates set his face like flint against the temp-
tations of the profession — temptations not merely to
exploit human suffering, but to forget the benefit of

302 THE RIVER OF LIFE

the patient and the interests of society in the pursuit
of science, or, still more, of personal ambition. Again,
Hippocrates realized the intensity, the danger of
diverging into magic and superstition — a divergence
into which the patient often unwittingly inclines to
urge upon the doctor.

But to say this in terms too general would be to
create another superstition in the name of anti-
superstition. The doctor, above all people, must
keep an open mind, as we have proved so clearly in
our own day. To call psycho-therapy, psycho-analysis,
and auto-suggestion superstitions because these great
and illuminating discoveries in the fields of pathology
have sometimes gone to the heads of their discoverers
like new wine, would be a fatal error, and one which
Hippocrates would have been the first to denounce.
Though the door must be shut against superstition, it
must always stand open to discovery, and even if a
little superstition temporarily creeps in through the
aperture, that must never be made an excuse for
creating the debilitating atmosphere of the closed
room.

In a book that I have lately been reading on Hippo-
crates by an American physician, Dr. Osborn Taylor,
I find an admirable dedication : ' To the noble pro-
fession, whose gospel is the healing of mankind,
whose honour is the Hippocratic oath.' That is well
deserved. I say, without the slightest fear that I
may be overstating my case, that there is no profes-
sion which is more exposed to the temptation to
forget honour, humanity, and kindliness than the
medical profession, and none in which the exploita-
tion of human suffering is easier. Yet there is none in
which the temptation is so triumphantly withstood. Let
this be remembered by the public when they feel
inclined to sneer at medical etiquette, and to speak

SEEING THE DOCTOR 303

of it as if it were a code for maintaining selfishness
and enrichment.

Medical etiquette is the salvation of the patient.
It is the one thing which stands between him and the
dangers of exploitation. It is what makes him and
his sufferings hold the dominant part in the dread
dramas of pathology.

A CONVERSATIONAL ACCIDENT

5th July 1924. — Here is my latest day-dream.
It came to me in the form of a conversational
accident. In the smoking-room of a Liner, a tall,
authoritative, zealous Jesuit Priest explained the
teachings of the Church on the doctrine of the
Eucharist, and traced its various implications,
psychological, physical, metaphysical, and mystical.
' Your theory sounds well enough,' said the little-
man in the corner, who up till then had been quite
silent, c but there are three people who do not believe
in it. I am one ; you are the other. The third is
Jesus Christ.'

We blinked at each other just as if some one had
flashed magnesium powder. The Priest hesitated for
a moment — then stood up, made the sign of the cross
on his breast, raised his two fingers, blessed us all in
silence and walked stonily out.

' Obliged to break off the action and withdraw
his troops,' said the General. ' Very unpleasant.
I 've had to do it myself before now.'

POSTSCRIPT

There is a silent and hidden River of Life which
underneath follows the surface stream, keeping pace
with it all the way, as does the subconscious element
in human life. Matthew Arnold knew this and has
told us of it in one of the greatest of his poems :

' Fate, which foresaw
How frivolous a baby man would be,
By what distractions he would be possess'd,
How he would pour himself in every strife,
And well-nigh change his own identity ;
That it might keep from his capricious play
His genuine self, and force him to obey,
Even in his own despite, his being 's law,
Bade through the deep recesses of our breast
The unregarded River of our Life
Pursue with indiscernible flow its way ;
And that we should not see
The buried stream, and seem to be
Eddying about in blind uncertainty,
Though driving on with it eternally.'

Then with a characteristic sense of the tragic irony
he has called forth, Arnold uses words which I shall
only spoil if I try to summarize them :

' But often, in the world's most crowded streets,
But often, in the din of strife,
There rises an unspeakable desire
After the knowledge of our buried life,
A thirst to spend our fire and restless force
In tracking out our true, original course ;

804

POSTSCRIPT 305

A longing to enquire

Into the mystery of this heart that beats

So wild, so deep in us, to know

Whence our thoughts come and where they go.

And many a man in his own breast then delves,

But deep enough, alas, none ever mines :

And we have been on many thousand lines,

And we have shown on each talent and power,

But hardly have we, for one little hour,

Been on our own line, have we been ourselves ;

Hardly had skill to utter one of all

The nameless feelings that course through our breast,

But they course on for ever unexpress'd.

And long we try in vain to speak and act

Our hidden self, and what we say and do

Is eloquent, is well — but 'tis not true : '

And then at the last he consoles us with the thought
that every now and then we do become aware of
the hidden river :

' A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast
And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again :
The eye sinks inward, and the heart lies plain,
And what we mean, we say, and what we would, we

know.
A man becomes aware of his life's flow,
And hears its winding murmur, and he sees
The meadows where it glides, the sun, the breeze.

And there arrives a lull in the hot race
Wherein he doth for ever chase
That flying and elusive shadow, Rest.
An air of coolness plays upon his face,
And an unwonted calm pervades his breast.

And then he thinks he knows
The Hills where his life rose,
And the Sea where it goes.'

Though I follow Shakespeare in declaring that I
have given my heart another youth by my daily

u

306 THE RIVER OF LIFE

digressions, i.e. by my sailings upon the River of Life,
I am well aware that all the time the other life, the
unseen River of Life, was below me, and that I could
not chronicle it, or play with it, or revel in its
current.

I admit that there is a patent ambiguity here.
Yet it is one which is not unreal because it is in-
soluble.

Anyway, it is fit that I should quote Matthew
Arnold in this Postscript to my book, for his hand
has been in mine throughout this writing. His
verse, I am told, is not liked by the world just
now ; but with me he is always in fashion, and has
been since I knew an Iamb from an Anapaest, and
that is over half a century. And so let me end with
one more of Arnold's many references to the Rivers
of Life :

' But the majestic River floated on,
Out of the mist and hum of that low land,
Into the frosty starlight,

. Then sands begin
To hem his watery march, and dam his streams,
And split his currents ; that for many a league
The shorn and parcell'd Oxus strains along
Through beds of sand and matted rushy isles —
Oxus, forgetting the bright speed he had
In his high mountain cradle in Pamere,
A foil'd circuitous wanderer — till at last
The long'd for dash of waves is heard, and wide
His luminous home of waters opens, bright
And tranquil, from whose floor the new bath'd stars
Emerge, and shine upon the Aral Sea.'

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